The Law and the Lost
by Kuroi-cho-tsuki-shiro
Summary: Eight weeks after facing execution, Rukia has chosen to go on living. But it is harder than she thought. The man who rules her future is a brother whom she barely knows. Old friendships are threatened and her own loyalties are spread thin between this world and another. In the midst of all this, the sins of her past are catching up with her. Kuchiki Rukia, Kuchiki Byakuya.
1. The White Blade, Death and the Girl

**Title: Dance Before the Darkness – Part 1: The Law and the Lost**

**Ratiing: PG**

**Disclaimer: Bleach belongs to Kubo Tite**

**Characters: Kuchiki Rukia, Kuchiki Byakuya **

**Warnings: A very little swearing. Violence. Angst.**

**Spoilers: This covers the period from just after Aizen, Tousen and Gin have ascended to Hueco Mundo up until Orihime is taken by Ulquiorra. So, basically, if you've seen the series, no spoilers.**

**Summary: Eight weeks after facing execution, Rukia has chosen to go on living. But it is harder than she thought. The man who rules her future is a brother whom she barely knows. Old friendships are threatened and her own loyalties are spread thin between this world and another. In the midst of all this, the sins of her past are catching up with her.**

CHAPTER 1: THE WHITE BLADE, DEATH AND THE GIRL

The light that fell in shafts from the slanting windows was already thin with the shards of winter, and it was cold, uncomfortably cold, in the darkened training hall. Except that Rukia had never felt the cold.

She knelt _seiza _at the far end of the room, eyes closed. Anyone entering might have been forgiven for assuming the place was empty, though the improbable stillness of the figure in black nevertheless held a heavy presence. She had the hall to herself and, for now, that suited her needs. She had no desire to discuss recent events with her colleagues and certainly had no intention of letting them see her train when her energy was at such a low ebb. No, let them wait until she was stronger, in all things.

Eight weeks after she should have been executed on the Sokyoku, she was back here.

She was right back. At the very beginning.

It had been a long time since she'd had to visualise her spiritual energy. When she did, it was as streams of silver light. Beginning again from nothing was like discovering yourself back in the body of a child. It was frustrating, a constant realisation of weakness. Calling on her powers had, until now, been no more difficult than choosing to move an arm or a leg. Then again, she thought ruefully, such things became hard, if not impossible, in the event of a physical injury, so why should a spiritual injury be any different? Because that was what they had done to her. They'd drained her _reiatsu _to the point where it was all but gone and then, like a knife jammed into an open wound, the _seki seki _had ensured that it could not heal. It was only in the last two weeks that she'd noticed any improvement in her situation; her _shinigami _uniform had manifested once more, and the hilt of her _zanpakuto._

The analogy with an open wound was perhaps a little too close to the bone. She found herself wondering if, like a physical wound, such a thing could fester and become infected. Her dreams these last few weeks had been vivid and disturbing, and that was a new thing; they'd started only after she'd been released from the _seki seki._

No. Concentrate.

She visualised the energy flowing down the length of her arms. She held her sword across her knees. Or, at least, had it a blade, it would have rested across her lap. For now, the hilt alone lay in her right hand.

Her _reiatsu _was barely recognisable, even to her own senses: just a few sparks, like grains of sand, running through her fingers. When first she'd been able to reach it, she'd been frustrated to find there was no steady flow to channel; nothing to grasp. With practice though, she'd discovered other ways to control even so slight a stream of energy. She could stem its course, she discovered. Seal it and allow it to gather in the focii in her wrists. When it was sufficiently dense, she could release it. Not in the wild bursts required for _kido, _and, initially, because of this, she'd assumed the discovery was useless. She could collect together enough energy for a _hado _spell, but, upon release, it had done nothing but drip blue fire from her fingertips, thinning out to the point where she'd had to shake the excess from her hands. Where it fell, it didn't so much as scald the floor. No, not enough for _kido, _but _kido _wasn't her only power.

She inched the energy out of her wrists. It wasn't something she could ever remember having been taught. As far as she was aware, she'd never been so starved of power as to force herself to develop a technique like this, and yet, it was something. Concentrate.

Ice formed across her right palm.

"_San no mai, shiro fune_." Spoken softly, as she released the rest of her energy.

She opened her eyes.

Her sword lay across her knees, the blade from hilt to tip, formed entirely of ice.

Oh, but she had longed for this. A sigh escaped her lips, even as the object of her desires began to melt away before her eyes. She traced the familiar shape with one finger, her touch leaving a silvery line down its length as it briefly refroze the ice.

"Extraordinary," said a familiar voice.

She started, the motion knocking the sword from her lap and causing the blade to shatter. It sent a whiplash pain through her belly and she gasped even as she tried to hide it. Why, she wondered, did it hurt? After all, it was not her _zanpakuto _shattering, though the sensation was not dissimilar to the way in which other soul reapers had described that experience. Perhaps, in some way, it was. Easier to create and easier to break, but somehow connected to her own soul still. "What is that technique?" asked Ukitake, from the doorway. She hid her discomfort in a bow of obeisance to her superior.

"_Shiro fave," _she said, without looking up.

"Are you alright, Kuchiki?"

"Yes, Sir." She began wrapping the broken sword hilt as Ukitake stepped into the room:

"Quite 've developed a command technique that doesn't require your sword to be in _shikai."_

"I found that a very limited flow of spirit particles could still be manipulated, but, as to its application, well, you can't fight with a blade made from ice."

"Achieved with barely a whit of spiritual energy though."

She bristled:

"With respect, Sir, it's not as if I am completely devoid of" – But he was smiling at her and, realising that he was teasing her, she fell silent:

"I'm glad you're feeling better. I know how frustrating this has been for you, but it is only a matter of time. Until today, I was unaware that you'd begun training again." She looked away. If honest, she'd been afraid he would try to stop her. "I don't mind what you do in your own time, but please be aware that when I remove my staff from active duty, it's usually because I think they need a break."

"Understood. Only, it's been so long" – she began.

"Should I remind you that imprisonment does not constitute a break."

"Of course, but I" –

"Don't make me order you to enjoy yourself, Kuchiki."

She looked up and her face cracked a small smile then:

"Sorry, Captain."

"I prescribe patience, lots of rest and, possibly, even a little merry-making."

"Merry" - ?

"A party."

She frowned, but Ukitake was pointing to a clock on the wall: "More specifically, about now, in the grounds of the Kuchiki mansion, and in your brother's honour." Her heart sank:

"I was meant to welcome the guests!"

"He sent a hell butterfly."

"Oh no."

She flung her bag over one shoulder and ducked under her captain's arm, as he held the door open, to hit the corridor at a sprint, calling back her thanks over one shoulder. Ukitake watched her go, smiling, then glanced back into the room where the only trace of her spiritual presence were the shards of ice lying scattered across the floor.

* * *

It was hard, sometimes, to be two people at once.

Rukia stared at her reflection in the mirror, at the dark eyes that looked wider than usual now that she had pulled her hair back from her face and tamed it at the nape of her neck with golden pins, and delicate chains that ran back across her head like braids. She'd always hated these occasions. Living on the streets, she'd learned the fundamentals of survival the hard way and had come to despise ornamentation. There was nothing practical or meaningful in it. The rigours of formalwear were designed to contain, restrain: from the stiff _obi _that forced her back straight, to the tight folds of the kimono that kept her from taking wide strides; all these things ensured a kind of grace and delicacy of movement that left her feeling oddly vulnerable and out of step. Rukia, the child from Rukongai, still ran in the streets of her mind, climbed trees, scaled walls, donned the uniform of a _shinigami _and gave hell to anyone who tried to underestimate her.

But she had made a promise to herself.

In choosing to remain here, in Soul Society, she had chosen to embrace a second, shadowy partner in her soul. Sometimes, she believed it had been there from her birth; sometimes it seemed like a newborn child, emerging wide-eyed into this world. This second, she associated with the name Kuchiki. It was noble, dutiful. Dilligent. Proper.

Rukia had once despised it, seeing there nothing more than her brother's projection of the proper manners for a noblewoman. She had denied its existence. Any compromise on her part was a weakness, a resignation to Byakuya's will.

He had, it seemed to her, wanted nothing more than a paper cut-out, a woman he could call his sister, but who would spend the greater part of her days in contemplation of her endless gratitude towards his person. He wanted someone who would spend her days quietly, and without complaint, enclosed in the walls of his house.

He wanted her sister.

But Rukia had never known her sister. She knew only what Byakuya had told her: that Hisana had smiled often, was acquiescent, and always wore the pastel colours he picked out for her.

Rukia, tonight, was wearing purple.

Yes, there were ways to compromise. She was learning. If you stepped onto a path of your own free will, with your dignity intact, then it wasn't a weakness. Perhaps it was even a strength. It just took a little courage.

* * *

By the time she joined the party, it was in full swing. The audience hall was crowded with guests, many of whom had spilled out onto the lawn. It was early winter and the weather was mild. A firey sunset dissected the sky with streams of pink and orange light. The leafless cherry trees formed a black lattice against the sky while, in the lengthening shadows, the household servants moved silently from tree to tree, lighting lanterns that hung from their branches.

Byakuya was standing on the decking outside the audience hall, looking as immaculate as ever. Tonight, not a hair was out of place. Not a single crease marred the fall of a blue silk kimono, on which a pair of dragons wound up towards his shoulders, their embroidery so fine that they were only visible when he turned towards the light.

As she joined him on the threshold between the warmth of the house and the cool of the garden at dusk, he turned towards her and nodded once before placing a cup of sake to his lips and taking a long draft. What was that? Approval? She sighed and followed his gaze out across the garden.

"The musicians were recommended to me by Kyoraku-_taichou. _They come from a region called Saido, beyond the Rukon, largely outside of our jurisdiction. Such music has been played there for thousands of years."

"Oh. Good," she responded. To her left, she caught the hint of a smile behind the cup he had lifted again to his lips:

"I bore you."

"No!"

"It's true. I have bored you every day you have attended me." She glanced over to see if this was criticism, but, if anything, his eyes betrayed only mild amusement: "Rukia, why did you not let the servants tend to my wounds?"

She stared at him, suddenly uncertain of how to answer. It had been her decision. Unohana had shown her how to bathe the wounds and dress them, and Rukia had even taken care of some of the household tasks. The truth was that she had wanted to. In all the decades that they had called one another a family, she'd barely spent more than a few hours with him each day, breaking fast or taking dinner, always in an atmosphere of staid formality. That hadn't changed, but her own attitudes had. Nothing in Rukongai had prepared her for a family like this one, but it was with the full weight of her stubbornness that she had resolved to somehow make it work.

"I'm of no use to Ukitake in my present condition," was all that she said: "It hasn't been a trouble to me."

"Indeed."

His musicians had begun to play in earnest: a flute shimmering above stringed instruments with notes so clear that they seemed to shape the air around them. Byakuya crossed to the edge of the decking and leant on the wooden barrier, watching his guests. Several couples stepped out into a clear area of grass and began to whirl and dance in time to the music. Rukia watched in fascination. It was the first time she hadn't spent one of these soirees tucked into a corner trying not to be noticed.

The music was pretty. Beautiful, in fact.

"_Nii-sama, _who are they?"

"You know the captains and vice-captains, of course," he said, gesturing to the crowd.

"Hm."

"The other guests are offshoots of the noble families: Shiba, Shihoin, Kuchiki; these are the names you recognise. Nado, Sakeraga, Daibuno; perhaps these are less familiar."

The _shinigami _did not, as a rule, dance, she noticed, but there were young men and women, strangers to her, turning and stepping to the sweet, clear music. Her fingers tightened on the edge of the decking. There was something intoxicating about that rhythm, fast enough to be insistent, yet slow enough to draw you in. "You should dance," said Byakuya.

"I should – what?"

"You can, can't you?"

"I" – she looked longingly at the couples moving so gracefully beneath the lantern lights. To follow the steps, yes, that would be easy, but they were nobility; every one of them shone with it.

Instead of answering him, she closed her eyes and stepped back from the edge of the deck, one hand still resting lightly on the railing. Barely moving, she traced the pattern of the steps with her feet. Then opened her eyes: "Two steps backward, as if the partner wanted to approach. Then three forward, but, at the last, she turns and passes behind him. Leading, for just one step. It's a dance for lovers, if they wish to tease one another."

"Or for opponents in battle, if they wish to test their strength," he said.

"I find the two are not so dissimilar." She turned wistfully back towards the garden, aware that he was watching her now.

"Love and combat," said Byakuya.

"You don't agree."

"It's an astute observation. Of the two, though, I believe, combat is the only one that requires you to win. Love, on the whole, requires you to lose, with good grace." She frowned at him. For once, he seemed to have relaxed a little and was leaning with his elbows on the edge of the decking, his grey eyes softer than she remembered them: "My cousin asks after you frequently." He gestured towards a man in the crowd: "Tonight, he cannot keep his eyes off you. If you require me to slit his throat on your behalf, then I shall do so gladly."

She looked over to where a young man in a scarlet kimono was, indeed, watching her intently from beneath a shock of dark hair. He looked to be a couple of years her junior, the brooding type. As their eyes met, he didn't look away:

"I don't think the preservation of my virtue necessitates murder," she said carefully as the boy broke away from the crowd and started to walk towards them. With each step, he seemed to gain a little confidence so that, by the time he reached her, he was positively glowing with it. A bow from the waist. A hand proffered in invitation:

"Would the Lady Kuchiki care for the next dance? With my greatest respects."

She glanced at Byakuya. He had straightened and his eyes were hard, yet still he nodded once:

"I have yet to see my sister dance."

"I would be honoured," said the boy, and suddenly his hand had found hers and he was leading her down to the lawn. The grass was slick with dew, licking about her ankles and, despite herself, she laughed when he broke into a jog to get them back to the impromptu dance stage in time for the music to begin.

This time, the lowest of the stringed instruments was replaced by a drum, while the others, along with the high steel flute, sprang into a bright, leaping rhythm. This dance was different. She watched. Or, at least, something inside her watched.

_Mai._

She'd never had to think up the release command for her sword. It had been there, just the same as the sword's name. Shirayuki followed her opponents' steps in battle, learning their rhythms, recording the beat to which they moved. Then she turned their music against them. Rukia danced always at a counterpoint.

Tonight though, the soul in her sword only watched: one phrase, then two, and by the third she had no difficulty in repeating the steps flawlessly. Her partner grinned, clapped his hands and switched left as she switched right. This went on for a dozen more rounds until, all at once, she turned and someone else took her hand. It was not forced. He turned her, still within the beat and cadence of the dance, so that she faced him and, as the next sequence began she had to dance with him instead of the boy who had invited her onto the floor.

She smiled. A few decades of training as a _shinigami _had given Renji, whether he liked it or not, a strange kind of grace, so he moved with ease and followed the steps well enough. Yet the paces were just a little too wide, too bold; the claps too loud. When the routine required two actions at once, his brows drew down into the most charming frown and, when next she spun, she threw her head back and laughed because he spun her too fast. She couldn't remember having this much fun. Not since they were children. There was freedom in this. A routine, yes, and they'd never been bound by any routine when they were kids, but now that both of them were grown, it felt good to grasp at small freedoms.

* * *

She was still dancing in the moonlight. Kaien's gaze was intoxicating. Had he ever looked at her this way before? Had he ever taken her hand so firmly in his own that he had almost crushed her fingers? Not in her living memory, and yet he had done so tonight. Laughter bubbled up in her throat as she felt her sandals scrape over the roots of the _sakura _trees. Joyous. Uncertain. They had come to the very edge of the lawn, away from the other dancers. Now he took her hand and started to walk with her into the shadow of the ink-black trees.

He led her down to the ornamental garden where slick shadows marked the edge of the fish pond and a grey bridge rose over the water like a colourless rainbow. A silver willow tree caught the ebb and flow of nighttime breezes.

He took her other hand in his own and turned to face her. She felt her heart start to beat faster in her chest. She didn't know why. They had been alone together many times and this was no different.

His hand cupped her neck and she felt herself go still.

She had dreamed of this moment, so many times. Trecherous dreams. They had been discarded in the cold light of morning, in the easy words they exchanged as commander and subordinate, in the way he mocked her, and in the affection he guarded for another woman. In the way he called her by her given name, but insisted she use an honorific for his. They had fallen away like dry scraps of paper.

She could shake them off, but not when he stood before her and looked at her in such a way.

Suddenly, he embraced her. A stillness had come over the garden. The wind had stopped, and he stooped and rested his head on her shoulder. Her hold on him tightened, her fingers digging into the heavy fabric of his uniform and the thick black hair at the nape of his neck. Strange. She had the sudden idea that they had stood like this before and, alongside her desire, there was, all at once, a dark ribbon of fear.

I will lose him, she thought. No. This is here; this is now. But don't let go. Don't ever let go.

She wondered at the silence of the garden, which had only moments before been filled with the sounds of distant music from the party. This calm was unnerving. Suffocating. Not a calm at all, but a weight. A presence. _Reiatsu. "_How" - ? she began.

It had been growing in such tiny increments that she'd not even noticed and that wasn't surprising; Kaien was undoubtedly sufficient distraction, but _reiatsu _wasn't like this. It didn't rise slowly out of nothing. It belonged to souls. It went where they went.

When Kaien straightened, he was staring over her shoulder. She couldn't move.

"Hollow," he said, and he stepped past her to confront it. Except her senses were telling her something else. Her senses were telling her that the only presence in the garden now was his own, but it was vast and dangerous, unlike anything she had encountered before.

Her muscles were locked. Her arms hung at her sides. A part of her wanted to turn around, but the air was so thick now that no effort on her part could force it aside. And anyway, did she really, she wondered, want to know what was behind her.

No.

She was trembling.

There was no hollow and no fighting and all she heard were his footsteps coming back to her across the grass. And still she didn't turn.

Long before she expected him to reach her, a hand flashed out and wrapped around her waist, his palm pressing down on her belly. The energy centre in her body lay just beneath his touch now: the very heart of her being. And, time and again, this motion on his part had stilled her in her training sessions. _Stay, think, become aware_: that was what it meant. It had always been his way of telling her that she had acted out of turn, but it had never been so strangely intimate. She felt dizzy. "Do you remember?" he asked: "Kuchiki, don't tell me you have forgotten."

"Kaien-_dono?"_

"Who you are." She didn't answer. His breath on the back of her neck made her shiver and, with a certain self-disgust, she realised she didn't know if it was with fear or pleasure. "You are _shinigami. _You bring death. Death is the beginning and the end of your existence. Death is the stroke of your sword and the touch of your hand. It is what binds you. Even in your kiss, in your sweetest caress. It is the reason why we danced tonight. Did you ever doubt that? It is the only thing you will ever give and the only time you will ever really feel." She shivered as he pulled away. "Deny it to me. What you felt that night, to hold my life in your hands. There's nothing more precious and no battle could ever compare. Because what accolade could be more fitting for a reaper of souls than to take the life of their fellow god. You are perfect, Kuchiki. You are everything I ever made you."

"Who are you?"

"You were mine the instant your blade pierced my heart."

She felt sick, but it wasn't the pressure in the air anymore, or even the thought of his touch. It was the sense that he had touched upon a truth somewhere, something buried so deep that it seemed to break inside her at his probing. Something she would have died to have kept hidden. Something she would die for, even now.

With a snarl of rage, she reached for her sword and whirled to face him. Then stopped. There was nothing in her hand. A dark purple kimono shrouded her body, with sleeves that stretched down to her hands, all fashioned from the finest silk. Tonight, she had chosen to wear purple.

And Kaien? Kaien was laughing at her, standing there, one hand hooked into his belt, the other deftly spinning his katana. He was just as she remembered him. Except it wasn't his katana.

Sode no Shirayuki span as his fingers twisted the white ribbon that adorned her hilt. Rukia's hands had frozen over the point on the belt where the sword normally hung. She could no longer feel the familiar _reiatsu _of her _zanpakuto. _"You are perfect, Kuchiki, absolutely perfect," he said, grinning lazily: "What need have you of this?" And at the end of one swing, he brought the sword crashing down onto the rocks at his feet.

Rukia flinched and staggered backwards. The blade had not broken, but she had felt the impact, and the insult as the sword was dragged unceremoniously over the gravel towards her by the silk ribbon. He whipped it out of her reach the moment she stepped forward to reclaim it. Another triumphant spin and he slammed it down again, making her stagger sideways. "Can't break a blade like this, can you? Not on rock; not on stone" – he unsheathed her sword and, without hesitation, drew it across his palm; the streak of blood was colourless in the moonlight – "Not on my own tough hide. A blade like this can pierce anything. Must be a way to break it though; isn't that right, Kuchiki?" She had started to circle him warily, her eyes never leaving Sode no Shirayuki, until he flash-stepped. An instant later, he was before her, his fingers cupped beneath her chin. Her face stared back at her from the blade of her own _zanpkakuto. _Tilted briefly, she could even see the reflection of the full moon emerging from the clouds behind her. And then she felt him push the blade into her body. Her lips pulled back in a grimace of pain.

He asked her to look him in the eye as he pulled the sword to the right and then the left, all the while, his fingers resting lightly on her chin. When he withdrew the blade, it was with a wet sound, and she folded backwards, landing at an angle on the sloping lawn. The smell of her blood clogged her senses. It mingled with the sweetness of the grass. And the wound in her belly stretched too deep. He's cut me in half, she thought. And it was her last coherent thought before she started screaming.

* * *

Screaming. Without sound. Only now her hands were bound and her feet too.

She sat up, wide eyed and gasping. The room was dark. She was soaked in sweat. The bindings on her wrists and ankles were silk sheets and, squinting through the dark, she could make out the familiar details of the room in her brother's house. It became apparent, after a moment, that she was engaged in a one-sided battle with her bedcovers. Extrictaing herself, she moved quickly to the door, pulled it open, crossed the decking and stumbled down onto the lawn. She managed two paces, barefoot through the grass before she dropped to her knees and was violently sick.

They weren't like ordinary dreams. They were the reason she found herself wondering if wounds to the spirit could fester as easily as wounds to the flesh if left untreated. When they'd drained her energy, when they'd left her in the _seki-seki, _had some disease crept in, something that her body rejected as fiercely as a poison?

It had started with dreams of her execution, but always, in them, there was no human boy coming out of the brown smoke to save her. There were only flames, consuming her body. Her death was preceded by a judgement read aloud to the assembled _shinigami: _a catalogue of her crimes. Gradually though, the fate of Kaien had taken a more and more prominent place in those proceedings until everything else had faded out. All that remained was him and his laughing accusations.

She'd dreamed of him every night for more than a week now. Every night she found herself alone, unarmed, and, every night, he found a way to kill her. Then, every morning, in the small hours before dawn, she came out here and emptied her stomach. Just like poison.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand. Tears and perspiration. There was no dignity in this. She would do her best to hide any sign of her weakness before the servants rose. As she made to stand though, she hesitated.

Byakuya?

Surely that was impossible. The man's spiritual pressure was like a spotlight; it was hardly reasonable to believe he might be able to sneak up on her. Yet, as she crouched there, she realised she could no longer doubt it. There was a whisper of his presence: just an echo and no more. But, overlying that, was the uncomfortable sensation that she was being watched.

You bastard, she thought. Of all people, I would not have you see me like this.

He did not, however, make any move to approach her and, after a moment, even the frail sense she had of his spirit faded.

Good, she thought, turning back towards the house. Choosing not to see the things we don't want to see is at least one thing we can agree on.

* * *

Byakuya did not return to his quarters that night. He went to the reading room. It had seen little use in the past half century since Hisana's death. There were few books here that he had not read to her and, since he had no inclination to read them alone, they had gathered dust here as the years had turned into decades. He came here, sometimes, to think.

He gave the surface of the writing desk a desultory rub with his sleeve. He should ask the servants to clean in here more often or risk it developing a mausoleum-like atmosphere. With a grunt of disapproval, he took a seat anyway and lit a candle. The only surface untouched by a grey down of dust was an ornate miniature cabinet of drawers set on one side of his desk. It had been opened recently and, on that occasion, he'd taken the time to wipe off the worst of the delicate, grey snowfall. Now, he opened it again and took out the self same object he'd placed inside on his last visit.

It was a scroll of paper, folded into a concertina. He spread it before him and let his eyes drift over the words without really reading them.

He didn't think she was ill.

He'd had enough experience of sickness to be fairly certain of that. Of course, there were other reasons why women were sick every morning, but that line of speculation led to dangerous territory; nothing in the rest of her behaviour pointed towards that, so he was willing, perhaps even eager, to sideline the possibility for now.

Not ill. At least, not physically.

He brushed one hand over the paper, evening out the creases.

His strange little sister.

A few months ago, his interest in her well-being might have been purely academic. He'd done many things for Hisana. Taking Rukia in had been, for a long time, the one he had regretted the most. If that was heartless, then he was heartless. The girl had hated him the moment she'd clapped eyes on him. It would have been easier if he could have hated her right back, but how could he hate the living image of his wife? It was as if the very powers that had taken Hisana away were mocking him. It had been easier then not to engage with her. He'd tried to do only what Hisana had asked: protect her and accommodate her within the walls of his house. It hadn't worked. At times, he'd felt a confusing fondness for her; at times, a resentment; at times, he'd found himself fiercely possessive of this one link to the woman he had loved.

But times were changing and he was changing. More importantly, she was changing. Beyond recognition.

She'd started answering back.

Oh, certainly she had a bluntness about her: a habit of speaking up when manners might have guarded against it. Years ago, she had even raised her voice in temper to him, but this was different. She had started offering her opinions. They were often converse to his, but still, for the first time in his life, he realised, he was learning something about her.

She'd taken it upon herself to tend him in his convalescence, so, as was his wont, he talked about small things while she worked. She'd gone to move some papers on his desk:

"The ink is still wet."

"Ah, sorry," she said.

"Calligraphy is one of the few activities Captain Unohana has deemed safe for me while I am recovering. That particular script is very ancient. Beautiful."

Unexpectedly, she had, after a moment's pause, responded:

"I've never really seen the point of it myself."

He looked up. She was standing very still beside the writing desk in the infirmary. For all the world, he thought, she looks as if she expects a reprimand, and he had, indeed, bristled at the comment, but he was careful not to let that show as he responded:

"Why is that?"

"It's very pretty. I can see that," she said, glancing at his letters: "But it's prettiness for pretty's sake. Nothing more. Who can it help?"

"Beauty is not a practical quality. Aesthetics does not require a purpose."

"It just seems a little selfish to me." She was sifting dead flowers out of a vase beside the window, folding them into her hands and leaving just the fresh blooms.

"You would do well to learn to appreciate beauty for its own sake."

He thought perhaps he'd gone too far then because the conversation faltered and she left soon afterwards. The next day, though, when she returned to treat the wound in his side and he sat in stoic silence, she spoke suddenly:

"I thought the human world was beautiful."

And he understood at once that she was continuing their conversation.

It was a reaching out, a first step. The first time he had discovered something new about her was also the first time she had given him a reason, albeit small, to acknowledge that she was not Hisana nor even an echo of her.

She was not Hisana.

Dawn light was beginning to creep in through the reading room window, rendering his candle unnecessary. He began to read the script before him in earnest:

'Kuchiki Rukia is hereby posted for the duration of two months, to zone one eight eight ninety, one point five spirit miles in radius, where she will be charged with the duty of protecting and cleansing human souls.' There followed a rafter of rules and regulations: the fine print; he knew it off by heart, having written out commissions for his own squad.

"I thought the human world was beautiful," she had said. And he had asked her:

"Why didn't you report in after all those weeks? When we believed that you were dead?" And she hadn't answered. Did you not think I could protect you? Did it never cross your mind that I would have tried? But those were the questions he left unspoken because he knew that it hadn't. The truth was that protecting Rukia was proving a little more difficult than her sister had anticipated.

"She's strong," Ukitake had said as he'd handed Byakuya the commission: "And I don't think any of us will know how strong until she's actually tested."

Until today, Byakuya had been willing to accept those words as empty platitudes. Ukitake was all for everyone's fulfilling their potential and had made no effort to hide his disapproval when Byakuya had asked that his sister be passed over for the position of an officer. Time, however, had conspired to prove him wrong and, this morning, he had finally been forced to dispell any illusion he may have been living under.

She had sensed him.

He'd hidden his spiritual presence and yet he had distinctly seen her stiffen and turn her head in his direction, then hesitate, as if she didn't want him to know that she knew.

It had shaken him. Another nail in the coffin of his ever mistaking her for Hisana again. Here, in his own house, was a being with a power level to rival some of his finest officers. With the possible exception of his lieutenant, Abarai Renji, he didn't believe there was a single man in his squad who could have seen through that concealment. So why had it taken him so long to notice her?

Had he really so grossly underestimated her? She had applied herself in her work. She was effective; efficient, both in her swordwork and her _kido, _but that wasn't usually enough to get you noticed in the squads. And the harsh truth was, she wasn't brilliant. She didn't shine. She was clumsy sometimes, made mistakes, didn't think things through, held back too much and acted sometimes as if she didn't trust her own blade. Flawed techniques. And, as for errors in judgement, well, the last four months spoke for themselves. No, nothing she had ever done was outstanding.

Except for one thing.

Because, fresh out of the academy and green, she had killed a vice-captain-class _shinigami _with a single stroke.

When you considered it coldly in the light of day, laying aside her guilt, the fiasco of a curtailed trial, even Byakuya's appeals to the authorities on her behalf and the inevitable ill feeling within her squad; when you got right down to it, well, that really was something.

Save that they had never spoken of it, and they never would.

With this in mind, he folded up the commission and replaced it in the drawer, then opened the window onto a spill of early winter sunlight. A dry, chill breeze swept through the dust on the table and not for the first time, he thought about re-opening this room, purchasing new books, filling the shelves with new stories. If he discarded these old volumes with their faded pages nobody would miss them.

Nobody would stop to wonder why he didn't read them anymore.


	2. Where the Real Ghosts Are

CHAPTER 2: WHERE THE REAL GHOSTS ARE

A small bar on a backstreet in the second district of Rukongai became even smaller as two death gods stepped inside. Two patrons who had been nursing drinks at one of the three tables quickly downed them and left, abandoning their money on the counter. The owner, however, an elderly woman, only beamed at the new arrivals. The three _shinigami _already present, squeezed into a corner of the room, had drunk themselves into stupors, but were still not running low on coin, so the addition of two more seemed to her a blessing rather than a hindrance.

Rukia hesitated.

"Let's go and celebrate," Renji had said. It had been her first day back on the job and it had been a relief to get out of the house. She'd been only too glad to extend that sense of freedom into the evening and delay her return to the sober household she shared with her brother. But:

"I thought it was just you and me."

"What?" He gave her an odd look as he pulled her towards the table. Leaning on her a little as he removed his sandals, he then proceeded to seat himself on the floor beside Rangiku Matsumoto, lieutenant of Tenth Division. She made a soft noise of approval as his presence forced her to move over and press herself further into the drunken embrace of her comrade whom Rukia recognised as another lieutenant, Hisagi Shuuhei.

Beside them, Rukia knelt down and concentrated a little too long on taking off her sandals. As far as she could see there was no way of politely removing herself from this situation. And why did she want to, anyway? Well, came the treacherous answer, these are his friends and not mine. But it was more than that. An evening alone with Renji would have meant that they could catch up, really catch up and, moreover, he was one of the few people in Soul Society who wasn't showing an irrationally keen interest in her right now.

Because, overnight, she had gone from being Byakuya's little shadow to being the woman at the centre of a furore designed to overthrow Soul Society and plunge the _Gotei _into chaos.

Despite the part that she had played in Aizen's plot, she was still relatively in the dark about events leading up to what might have been her execution. She had Aizen's own explanations, which had carried a ring of truth, but, beyond them, she had a lot of her own questions and very few answers. It didn't help that people had begun to look at her with hungry eyes, as if they expected her to start spouting revelations, at any moment, that would shed light on the captains' betrayals.

As if to confirm this, as soon as she knelt down, the man at her side, Kira Izuru, stiffened. One of Renji's classmates from the academy, up until recently, he had been vice-captain to Ichimaru Gin, one of the three traitors. In fact, she noticed suddenly, she was currently the only one at the table with a rank lower than vice-captain. She made a quick assessment of her drinking companions: Shuuhei was leaning back in the corner, his eyes glassy. Rangiku and Izuru both looked drunk, but alert. And then, of course, there was Renji who was still sober, but, apparently, on a mission to remedy this because a signal from him brought the owner hurrying over with a tray of rice wine. He lifted a glass to his lips and put an arm around Rangiku's shoulders, as if, Rukia thought, that were the most natural thing in the world.

"Rukia, to what do we owe the honour of your presence?" purred Matsumoto.

"I invited her," said Renji: "Rukia just started back with the Thirteenth today."

"Ooh, you wouldn't have brought that beautiful brother of yours along, would you?"

"I – what? No."

"Pity."

"Byakuya?" slurred Shuuhei: "Byakuya has a stick up his arse."

Rukia gave Renji a pained look. She'd encountered more lucid conversation in he dirt bars of the Seventy-Ninth and Eightieth districts, and thought that she might at least now be justified in leaving. Renji just smiled and offered her a cup of wine.

"How are you feeling, Rukia-_san?" _asked Kira.

That was another thing. People kept asking her how she was.

"Well. Thank you."

"You've healed fully then?"

"I was never injured, Kira-_dono," _she explained: "I was only placed on leave while my powers returned, but yes, I have made a full recovery. I trust that you are well." She'd meant the comment flippantly, but he looked as if he might suddenly burst into tears at her concern.

Renji leaned across the table with an explanation:

"We've all been hauled up today."

"Huh?"

He jabbed himself in the chest:

"Insubordination." Pointed at Hisagi: "Insubordnation." And at Kira: "Treason."

"Treason?"

"All charges dropped, of course."

"It doesn't change what I did," said Kira, failing to notice that he'd started drinking from Matsumoto's cup.

"In the absence of captains Kuchiki, Ichimaru and Tousen, we got called up in front of the big guns: Kyoraku, Ukitake and Yamamoto himself," said Renji.

"Would make anyone turn to drink," Shuuhei muttered. Rukia frowned:

"Surely nothing you did was any worse than anyone else. I heard there was fighting all over the _sereitei."_

"There was," said Shuuhei, becoming fully conscious: "And it will be dealt with within the squads. The way I see it, Yamamoto's already made the decision to dispense with any formal punishments, but the law demands that all indiscretions be recorded, including those made without the full knowledge of the perpetrator" – he nodded towards Kira – "Including aiding and abetting the traitors."

"It's a formality," said Renji: "You know how it is with the law, especially now that the Central Forty-Six are gone."

"If the Balance shifts because of something we did here," added Shuuhei, referring to the balance of the living and the dead: "Then they need to trace back how it happened, but, in terms of our actually being held responsible – well, everyone here knows why we did the things we did."

"We are acting captains, after all," said Renji with a grin.

"So we were asked to report directly to Division One" – began Shuuhei, but Renji finished for him:

"For a formal dressing down. As becomes more important folks, like us."

"Insubordination, huh?" said Rukia, relaxing a little in light of his good mood. She smiled slyly: "Who were you trying to kill, Renji?"

"Oh, well, it was probably just – you know – my involvement" –

"You're a bare-faced liar, Renji-_kun!"_ said Matsumoto: "You had it in your head to challenge Byakuya Kuchiki and I heard Fourth Squad spent two days trying to put you back together again!"

The sudden change in the atmosphere at the table was palpable. Unfortunately, Rangiku seemed oblivious: "Before we knew the orders for your execution had come from Aizen and not the Central Forty-Six, the one man most fervantly upholding the law was Kuchiki-_taichou." _Rukia broke with Renji's gaze and glanced towards the pale-haired vice-captain whose eyes widened at her expression: "What? He was practically hauling you to the scaffold himself. Why do you think he fought Ichigo on the Sokyoku?"

"Ichigo was accused of Aizen's murder."

"Ichigo was trying to save you! That's all Kuchiki cared about!" She shook her head: "I don't know what kind of story he fed you, Ru" –

"Okay!" Renji slapped the table hard enough that a number of the drinks attempted to hurdle the edge of their cups. "More sake then."

"No, that's fine." Rukia found herself on her feet, pulling on her sandals.

She heard Renji calling after her, but she didn't turn back. The door was a bead curtain that fell into place as soon as she was out in the street. She didn't know where she was going. Indeed, once outside, the sharp winter wind dampened some of her resolve and she leant heavily against the wall of the bar, where, unfortunately for her, she was still at liberty to hear the raised voices of her comrades inside:

"Thanks, Matsumoto! Seriously, thanks!" Renji's voice dripped with sarcasm.

"He's right," said Kira: "That would have sounded better coming from someone else. Were you planning on telling her about your battle with Byakuya though, Renji?"

"Some day."

"You really think killing her brother is going to impress this girl? She actually seems quite fond of him."

"What? One good deed and the man's a hero? He loses the nerve to kill her for one second and suddenly he's her saviour! Well, in case she hadn't noticed, there were other people trying to save her with far more consistency than he ever showed!"

Renji's voice was raw. Moments later, he stamped out into the night, the beads falling back behind him, so that briefly, light from the bar illuminated the street before it fell into grey shadows again. He hesitated, becoming aware of her slowly, like the touch of rain on his shoulders, and he turned. She would not forget that expression for a long time to come: the instant he realised she had heard everything.

"I'm sorry," she said, looking down.

"What for?" he said, and, before she could answer: "Probably time to be getting back, huh?"

"Not right now."

Renji rubbed nervously at the back of his neck and turned round in the road as if someone might come to his aid:

"You know, the stuff they said; they're just drunk. They didn't mean it."

"Maybe it's better if you stay here with them." She steeled herself and tried to smile: "Acting Captain, huh? We've come a long way."

"Since Inuzuri? Yeah, I guess. You haven't changed a bit though."

She didn't answer that. The smile had slipped. "Hey, Rukia." She caught his wrist before he could touch her and he looked down in confusion: "What's wrong?"

"I want you to stop the things you do for me," she said quietly. And she looked down so that she wouldn't have to see his face: "I don't want you to save me, Renji. Not from him. Not from anyone."

Those words, those sentiments, now impossible to retrieve. He stood there in silence, one hand resting on his sword, the other having fallen to his side. Now those fingers curled slowly into a fist and she felt a strange heat roll off of his spiritual energy. For the first time, she found herself wishing profoundly that she could not feel him, that he was not imprinted on her own spirit. If she said nothing perhaps they would remain like this forever, balanced between yesterday and tomorrow, but, taking a breath, she looked up. No point in hiding anything now. Her expression was strained: "Vice-Captain."

He stepped around her and, eyes forward, ducked again into the bright lights of the bar. When the beads had fallen into place behind him, she stepped away. Her face was hot, but her eyes were bone dry. She turned and, head down, started walking.

He didn't call her back. He never had.

* * *

The outskirts of Rukongai were a tidal zone where civilisation lapped at the encroaching wilderness and dilapidated buildings stood tumbledown and empty in untended fields. Beyond this rand there was farmland and true wilderness; Rukia had visited the outlying regions often enough, whether for training or merely to pass a day outside of the city Yet she had rarely come to this place because this was where the real ghosts were. In the shadows where the moonlight wouldn't fall.

She'd walked through a pale village. Every building had long ago fallen into ruin. A few had been burned from the inside out and were black husks against the white shells of other, intact buildings. The sheer stillness of the place had made her pause and she'd stood in the empty square as the first sleet of the year had begun to fall. It was somewhere past midnight. Having left Renji behind, she'd just kept walking until she'd found somewhere quiet.

Ever since the events on Sokyoku Hill and her decision to stay in Soul Society, she felt as if she'd been playing a game of make-believe, dancing around half-truths. She was still coming to terms with this new life: the notion that she had once been human, had had a human sister and a family who had been searching for her. She needed to believe in something. She needed to believe in Byakuya.

Her footsteps took her away from the village. A little way on, the road ended in a field, long gone to seed. The grass was long. Every blade glittered with the first frost and, as she moved through it, she touched the tips, the little scratches onher palms proving to her that she really was here. Not all just a dream from the confines of a prison cell.

She knelt down at the very centre of this silver expanse and, after a moment, lay back. A vast abyss, the vault of the sky, filled her vision. And the white sphere of the moon.

Sometimes, the world turned too fast. Sometimes you needed it to stop, to freeze in place. Just so you could get a good look around.

Renji. She shouldn't have said those things.

Or maybe she should have said them a long time ago.

"I was never blind, you fool," she whispered. The moon offered neither judgement or opinion: "And not completely heartless." But the man was infuriating. No, she could forgive him that. He meant well. Ichigo was just as infuriating. The difference was that, when it came to the important things, the things that mattered, Ichigo always knew what to say. Or what not to say. Even if, all the rest of the time, he was obnoxious, immature, arrogant and mulish; he was none of those things when it mattered. And Renji? Well, Renji, almost without fail, managed to get it exactly the other way around.

Why was she lying here, comparing the two, anyway? What was she hoping to prove? That her thoughts turned invariably to the human boy if given liberty to roam? It would do her no good. She had chosen this life, her comrades, her family. Now, there simply remained the tricky question of how she was going to juggle it all. She'd spent so long running away, never dreaming that standing still might be just as exhausting.

Somewhere to her right, a hollow screamed.

She came alert at once. There probably wasn't anyone around here but her, so there shouldn't be anybody in danger. That meant she would be unwise to confront the demon alone, especially having told no-one she intended to come up here. Then again, if there was someone and she didn't go…

She stood up and, with one hand on her sword, started to jog towards the trees.


	3. And the Past Stares Back

CHAPTER 3: AND THE PAST STARES BACK

Byakuya's eyes rested on the image of his wife, on the straight lines of smoke rising from the incense and the red berries arrayed in sheafs about the shrine. It was a time of year that was not convivial to flowers, but the servants had done a fine job in ensuring that the shelves were still adorned with colour. Even so, he did not see them or the picture. In his mind's eye, he saw a scroll of paper bound with the seal of First Division. He saw the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows of the audience hall. He saw Juushiro Ukitake kneeling opposite him with an expression both apprehensive and sad.

"What is this?" he had asked.

At his side, Zaraki Kenpachi had given a bark of laughter and screwed up his own missive. It had been of a similar nature to Byakuya's.

Ukitake sighed:

"None of us can act entirely outside of the law. The charges will not be upheld, but the misdemeanours will be recorded, as is our duty. That is the way of it. Until the Central Forty-Six can be restored, neither myself nor Yamamoto is in a position to make judgements on how our actions have affected the Balance."

"And then what? Then we will be placed on trial?"

"No. It is a formality only."

"A formality from which you are exempt, Juushiro?"

"No. My record shows one count of insubordination," he said without even blinking: "I acted directly against the Captain Commander's orders when I destroyed the Sokyoku to save your sister."

Byakuya's gaze dropped. To his right, Zaraki giggled. The sound, coming from a man of his stature, sounded like the first rumblings of an avalanche.

It had not been Byakuya's intention to invite the Captain of the Eleventh Division into his house, but, since Ukitake had been charged with addressing both of them and Byakuya was currently housebound, this had, at the time, seemed a reasonable compromise. The young noble was beginning to regret it. The large man continued to rumble gently until Byakuya narrowed his eyes pointedly.

"What? I'm savouring the moment Kuchiki Byakuya was charged with insubordination for turning his blade against his own sister." Zaraki smiled like a wolf: "Who knew this meeting was going to be quite so entertaining?"

"Quiet."

"Make me."

Byakuya swallowed back the inclination to do just that.

Zaraki unfolded from the floor like a monstrous shadow, abasing the light of the afternoon. Byakuya forced his eyes away from him, but not his awareness. The man's _reiatsu, _though tightly controlled, leaked out around the edges. Wherever it touched Byakuya's, it felt like a series of small electric shocks, which left the young noble wishing he could ask him to sit further away. As if his obnoxious behaviour was not enough, sitting in his spiritual presence was like resting beneath a cloud of continually nipping mosquitoes.

"Are we done here?" Zaraki asked. Ukitake sighed and, with a nod, accepted that it might be unwise to keep the two captains in one room for any longer than was strictly necessary.

Byakuya was the last to stand, rising carefully so as not to let Zaraki see his injuries still pained him. As the Eleventh Division captain moved to leave the room, Byakuya approached Ukitake, trying to return to him the folded scroll:

"I want this taken off my permanent record," he said firmly.

"I see." The look Ukitake turned on him was cold: "Why don't you read it to me?"

"Juushiro….."

"Byakuya."

It was with obvious reluctance that he unfolded the parchment.

"Two counts. Insubordination. Attacking in contravention of a direct order," he read softly and looked up: "He was breaking into a prison facility. What he did was against the law."

"You were angry," said Ukitake and Byakuya stiffened. "And the second count? Read me the second."

"Releasing a sword" he read: "Against an unarmed opponent." This time, he did not look up: "I would not have hurt her."

"What was it you were intending then, Byakuya_-sama_?" Ukitake did not sound angry now. He waited for the other man's answer, but only sighed when Byakuya gave none. "If you tell me that you have no regrets, _Taichou, _I vow to you that I will request the Captain Commander wipe your record clean."

Byakuya didn't even hesitate:

"I have no regrets. Do it."

"It means so much to you? Just so that your record appears without blemish?"

Byakuya said nothing, but he held out the parchment and, after a moment, Ukitake took it.

The older man left without a backward glance, passing the bulk of the Eleventh Division captain in the doorway and, as he did, Zaraki's teeth curled back in something that could not have passed for a smile in anyone's book:

"And you call me a savage?" he had asked Byakuya.

The incense had almost burnt itself out. It was late and Byakuya knew he should retire.

"You would not have let this happen, I think," he told the unblinking, smiling picture. He sounded uncertain. Hisana had seen the world in simple shades of light and dark. Things had been straightforward for her. She would not have let Rukia live in his house like a constant visitor. She would have welcomed her in a way that Byakuya had never been able to do. It seemed almost punishment enough that she just kept on smiling in the face of his doubt.

Her sister was all that had ever mattered to her.

And because of that, it was only alone, late at night and in the knowledge that no-one else could see his thoughts that he allowed himself this confession: he had never before had so much cause to hate someone.

Hisana had filled dozens of journals with details of her search for the missing girl. He had wanted to burn them after her death so that he need never lay eyes upon nor acknowledge the depths of her obsession again. Yet here it had stepped into his life in the form of a young woman who mocked him with his own wife's face.

He had never had so much cause to hate, and he had never had so much cause to cherish. For her sake. Because this was the only demand that Hisana had ever made of him: to take care of her sister when she was gone.

Yet, given the full weight of the law behind her execution, Byakuya had hesitated only briefly.

He didn't analyse his laws of the _Gotei _were a powerful foundation on which he could build his justifications later. And he didn't stop to wonder if his own feelings had played a part. He wanted to believe that he had acted in a manner coolly objective given the facts of the case, that he had gone along with the decision of the authorities and, at great cost to himself and his family, had resigned himself to their judgement. He believed this whole-heartedly. Right up until it was revealed that the execution was a foil, that no eternal laws demanded her death. The only one who had sought it with unflinching conviction had been him.

The truth was simple: deep down some part of him wanted her dead. Rukia. The same woman who had kept on believing, until the end, that he had the means and prediliction to save her. The same woman who had nursed him for eight weeks. Who had taken his hand on the field of battle and offered him forgiveness for a crime she'd known barely a tenth of. "What am I, Hisana?" he whispered to the portrait.

She smiled and gave no answer. And, at last, he closed the doors of the shrine. If he slept, he thought, he might be free of such thoughts for a few hours at least.

* * *

This had been a mistake.

It was not a particularly large hollow: only about four times the height of a man; bipedal, with a flat, broad head and horns curled like a water-bison's. Rukia had judged her first cut well. She'd come through the trees. Height was always an advantage. It meant she'd been able to drop down from above: straight into the back of its skull, and that should have been the end. Except the blade of her sword had struck home only to ricochet off of the hollow mask and skid downwards to lodge itself between the beast's shoulder blades. That had been the first mistake. The second had been letting herself get distracted in trying to pull her _zanpakuto _out of its thick hide. A clawed and armoured hand had closed around her body and it was sheer luck only that, instead of crushing her, the demon had thrown her clear. The sword had come free, but she'd had no time to break her fall.

A tree branch, frozen beneath a covering of winter frost, failed to shatter as her body slammed into it, the force of the impact jarring her spine. Then she was dropping. This time, though, she twisted and found her footing on the icy ground. No permanent damage. She shook herself. Her bruises would serve as a reminder, should she need one, that it was fool's work to take on a hollow alone. As she'd suspected, this area of woodland was deserted. She should have gone for help.

Of course, she never fought entirely alone:

"_Mai, _Sode no Shirayuki." The power of her Soul Slayer blazed inside her, filling her briefly with that other presence, the spirit of her sword. Never completely alone: "_Tsugi no mai, hakuren!" _As she touched the blade to the ground, a stream of white lightning surged through her arms and down the length of the sword, stripping it of all colour. She felt the _zanpakuto _lengthen, taking its true form, and now she braced herself, releasing the energy into a wall of ice.

She already knew that _hakuren _would not be enough to stop this creature. Its presence was an ugly gash on the spiritual landscape. The ice wall shattered as it flailed out with both arms, but it had bought her time. Now she sprung onto its back, moving too fast to think through her actions, finding strange purchase on its bony hide. And again, she plunged her blade into the base of its skull.

It screamed. But it didn't die.

"What the hell are you?" She was ready, this time, for the hand that came groping towards her and her sword scythed through the first three fingers, sending them tumbling to the ground like broken sticks. Another two claws still tore through the sleeve of her uniform and over her arm, emerging red with her blood. Damn. It was fast. She turned just in time to deflect the maimed hand with her blade. Too fast. Too close, Rukia. But it was too late to retreat now. She'd likely riled the thing enough that it had no intention of letting her go and, even if she could outpace it, she wasn't about to lead it back to Rukongai.

It turned to face her.

She frowned. One part of the hollow's mask had come clean away, revealing a gleaming yellow eye beneath. No. Wait. It wasn't an injury; there was no damage to the surrounding bone and she was seeing an eye; not the ethereal light that usually shone from the empty socket of a hollow's skull. None of her blows had broken the mask, so had it been like that to begin with? A hollow with only half a mask and a face beneath? The damn thing looked almost human! _"Tsugi no mai," _she began again, touching the tip of her sword to the ground. In the same instant, a pale light began to gather where the creature's jaw bone hooked into its chin. _Cero. _Not a normal hollow, then. Not even slightly.

She registered movement on the periphery of her vision.

The hollow, _cero _now glowing at the end of its snout, turned towards the motion and, all at once, she realised that she would need to act now or whoever had entered the clearing would take the full brunt of that _cero._ _"Hakuren." _The wall of ice raced out across the forest path, collding at full force with the _cero. _A conflagration of ice and light.

There were shadows flashing through the storm. Yes. She could sense them now, the familiar _reiatsu _of other _shinigami_. She was no longer alone.

As her own power receded like a tide, she saw the hollow flat on its back. A figure appeared briefly on its crown. Another on its chest. The first plunged its _zanpakuto _into the white half-mask, breaking it into two. Then a silvery blue light filled the clearing. Rukia sheathed her sword, but gasped as she saw the other who had been caught in her blast: "Renji!"

Rangiku was already with him. Considering their earlier escapades, Matsumoto, Hisagi and Kira all looked relatively sober. "Renji!" Rukia dropped to her knees beside her comrade. Rangiku had heaved him into a sitting position and he was conscious, but bleeding.

"You stupid man," Rangiku was saying affectionately: "Trying to be the big hero! Don't you think Rukia-_san _can handle herself? It was a good thing for you she put that wall of ice between you and its _cero _otherwise you could have kissed good-bye to your sweet hide." She tried to brush some of the dust from his face, but he knocked her hand away, and Rukia turned aside so as not to see his expression. She could see Hisagi and Kira now, strolling back along the forest path.

"What was it?" she called out to them.

"Not sure," called Shuuhei: "A broken mask; remarkably strong."

"It looked as if it knew it was about to die," said Kira.

"Hmm. Maybe it was more sentient than your average demon too." Shuuhei glanced towards Renji: "Hey, Abarai-_kun, _what are you doing on the ground?"

"Shut up!"

"He was running in to save Rukia-_chan," _Rangiku said teasingly.

"I said, shut up! What's wrong with you people?"

As Rukia turned back, he was already on his feet and stumbling down the road back to Rukongai. The four remaining _shinigami _glanced at one another.

"I didn't mean to" – she started, but then stopped. She had no way of finishing that sentence. I didn't mean to save his life. I didn't mean to protect him.

"Don't worry, Sweetheart," said Rangiku: "He'll remember to thank you just the moment he gets his pride on a leash. Men can be stupid like that sometimes." As she spoke, she walked back past Shuuhei, lifting her hand to trace one finger along his collar bone and across his chin. He showed no anger, though it was clear from his expression that he'd not heard a single word. "Fairly easy to get on side though," Rangiku added, dipping her head and looking up at him from beneath a bang of pale auburn hair. The young man gave a nervous smile as if he had no notion of what was going on but thought it might be good. "Come on, Rukia," Rangiku said, breaking the spell: "I'll give you some tips."

As soon as they were walking again, Kira and Hisagi put their arms around one another's shoulders and returned to a drunken swagger. It was strange to see the change and Rukia found herself wondering which was the truth: the cold, precise fighters who had cleanly finished the hollow between them, or the louts who now staggered ahead of her. She suspected that the answer was, somehow, both.

Rangiku, Rukia was pleased to discover, did not offer any of her promised tips on the walk back to Rukongai, though she did put one arm around the younger woman's shoulders as if they had been firm friends for years. Eventually, Rukia lightly returned the embrace about her waist. And, at this, Rangiku broke the long silence between them with a whisper: "I know where this place is and what it means, you know. So why did you come back here?"

"I often come back here."

"This is where Kaien-_fukutaichou _died, isn't it?"

"Where he was killed, yes." Rukia felt the other woman's steps falter, but continued anyway: "I knew if I didn't come back shortly after he died then I never would. Everyone else avoids it. They're afraid, but I don't want to live like that. It was awful at first, but now it's not so terrible. It's just – quiet." Rangiku had stopped walking, had unlinked their arms and was now staring at Rukia with a serious expression:

"I don't understand you, Rukia_-chan. _I don't understand you at all," she said, adjusting her scarf.

"Kaien-_dono _died here, but this is also the last place I saw him alive. It was the last time he spoke to me and the last time I watched him fight. I have no desire to forget those things or allow them to be tainted by fear."

Without a word, Rangiku reached forward and took her hand.

After a moment, they began walking again.


	4. The Captains' Meeting

CHAPTER 4: THE CAPTAINS' MEETING

Rukia lost track of Renji on the outskirts of Rukongai. One moment, he was ahead of them; the next he had vanished. Their little party broke up just within the gates of the _sereitei _and Hisagi spoke up, untangling himself from his companion as he did:

"I'm going to report this. It may be that the Department for Research and Development are already aware there was a hollow in Soul Society, but I'm not happy that was an ordinary hollow." Kira nodded agreement:

"Better to be safe."

"Forgive me," said Rukia: "But I wondered: could there be any kind of link between a creature like that and the one that possessed Kaien-_dono?" _The three vice-captains turned to look at her and she coloured. Why was it they seemed surprised she could say his name? The same reason that they never dared mention him in her presence: "You see," she pushed on: "It shouldn't be possible for a demon to possess a _shinigami. _Since I've been relieved of my duties, I've had a little time to do some research. Our bodies react to hollow _reiatsu _as if it were a poison and vice-versa. There should be no way for a hollow and a _shinigami _to merge, and yet that's exactly what it did. And the hollow we fought today had a human face beneath its mask. Almost like a hybrid."

"Then there's Aizen's ambitions to merge the powers of a hollow and a _shinigami," _added Kira.

"Yes, he said he was experimenting with the notion of merging the two energies to create something stronger."

"He said that to you?" Hisagi asked her.

"Yes, on _Sokyoku _Hill."

"Have you reported it?"

"To my brother."

"Good." He exchanged a glance with Kira: "There was something strange about that hollow's _reiatsu _was well as its strength. She could be right."

"They would be a dangerous weapon for Aizen," Rukia continued. She'd half-expected them to dismiss her opinions out of hand, but now that they were listening it felt important that she voice all of her suspicions: "I've been helping to treat my brother's wounds and the residual hollow energy prevents healing. Unohana explained it to me and I've discovered it for myself; even after all this time, it's still possible to feel it." They had started walking again. Hisagi looked back at her with a frown:

"How odd. I don't recall Byakuya fighting any hollow."

"Oh," she frowned too, but, before she could continue, Hisagi started up a conversation with Kira and she found herself back walking beside Matsumoto: "Do you remember?" she asked the older woman.

"No. Byakuya was on _Sokyoku _with the rest of us. The hollow opened a gargantua to transport the traitors to Hueco Mundo, but they never entered combat."

"Gin's sword pierced his chest."

Matsumoto chuckled:

"There was nothing hollow about Gin."

"How do you know? Perhaps Aizen did something to the captains who followed him."

"No, you're going to have to trust me on this one. I know Gin and I'd have known if there was a change in his _reiatsu. _He was the same old bastard he's always been."

"But it doesn't make sense! Unohana showed me how to sense the hollow energy in Byakuya's wounds."

"Byakuya didn't fight any hollow, Sweetheart." Matsumoto hesitated: "Apart from Gin and Renji, the only person he fought was" –

"Ichigo," Rukia finished for her.

* * *

Rukia cut a small figure amongst the assembled captains. The message that Byakuya had sent to her with a hell butterfly had been simple: attend the meeting and be prepared to answer any questions posed. She had been called forward mere moment's after stepping into the great hall of Captain Commander Genryuusai Yamamoto's barracks.

"He called it _Hogyoku," _she was saying: "It was created by Urahara Kisuke, though he deemed it too dangerous to use. Theoretically, it breaks down the barriers between _shinigami _and hollow."

"Did he say how?" the commander rumbled.

"No, Sir."

"It is possible, of course, that even he did not know the mechanism. We shall make arrangements to interrogate him on the matter. For now, if you could relay, in detail, all of the information Aizen passed on to you; it may be that it will prove useful to us."

As she began to speak, Byakuya's thoughts drifted. He had heard this before, spoken like a confessional at his bedside. Yet, for all that it had been an ordeal for her, Rukia seemed to have emerged relatively unscathed from the incident. With the exception of her strange, nighttime sickness, she had returned to all other aspects of her life with renewed confidence and resolve.

A part of that was the boy. You'd have had to have been blind not to see the way she'd looked at him. The way he'd looked at her. Since Ichigo had returned to the world of the living, Rukia's activities had acquired a new purpose and conviction. She'd thrown herself into her training, but where previously she had seemed almost to want to punish herself with the regime, now she worked with a fierce determination and, for the first time, seemed to take pride in her increasing strength. She'd always had something to prove to herself; he understood that. Only now, he suspected, she had something she needed to prove to someone else.

Ichigo had broken into Soul Society, yet over the space of a few weeks, he had become, in the eyes of the commanders of the _Gotei, _a hero: the only one who had seen through Aizen's ruse.

Except that wasn't what Byakuya had seen.

Byakuya had seen a child, lost in the land of the gods, who had stumbled his way into another man's plot. Did they not see? Ichigo was just as much a victim in this as Rukia. He had not come to Soul Society to foil Aizen's plans. He had come for her.

She finished and it looked as if Genryuusai would dismiss her when, all at once, she spoke out of turn: "Sir, there is something I must ask – one thing that's been troubling me."

"Go on."

"Ichigo's _reiatsu _on the _Sokyoku; _it was much changed from the world of the living. His strength increased at an accelerated rate. He bested some of our finest officers after only a few months of training" – she hesitated as if perhaps she had been wrong to draw attention to that; then, carefully, she said: "And the wounds he inflicted on my brother were filled with hollow _reiatsu."_

There was an audible intake of breath amongst the captains. Before her arrival, Byakuya had reported on his encounter with the young human in detail. He hadn't wanted her here; it was the one piece of information he had hoped to protect her from. Not because she didn't deserve to know, but because there would be a better time and place. What he, and the other captains, had not counted upon was this extraordinary leap in her intuition. If Genryuusai was surprised though, he hid it well:

"Indeed. The exact nature of Kurosaki's development still eludes us, but you are correct in assuming his _shinigami _powers have been augmented by those of a hollow."

Byakuya could only see his sister's back. A shiver went through her as the captain commander spoke though and he realised that she hadn't been sure. Not completely certain. For a moment, he wondered if she would lose control. He was still haunted by the image of a woman who had returned one night, covered in the blood of her superior officer. He had never seen a living creature with such empty eyes. And he had never seen anyone so thoroughly break apart as she had that night. This, more than anything, was why he had wanted to protect her.

Instead, though, he heard a breadth of control in her voice that he had not thought possible:

"What did they do to him, Sir?"

There was a further shifting of feet and murmuring as some of the captains tried to make sense of the question, but Byakuya understood immediately and cleared his throat:

"Do not forget that it was Kisuke Urahara's planning and forethought that ultimately saved Soul Society from an untimely fate as well as from an injustice that would have claimed your life, Rukia."

Her head snapped towards him. Her eyes were filled with an uncharacteristic hostility:

"Kisuke Urahara created the _Hogyoku, _a device capable of merging hollow and _shinigami _powers_. _It was Kisuke who trained Ichigo and now we know that his _reiatsu_ is a combination of hollow and _shinigami. _With respect, am I supposed to ignore the obvious connection?"

"Rukia," Byakuya warned her softly. A strange silence had descended over the room. The Captain Commander stared at her through half-closed, unreadable eyes.

"_Nii-sama, _this is" –

"Rukia!"

She looked startled and then just sad as she turned back towards Genryuusai.

"Be that as it may," the Captain Commander said: "It is a question for another time. You all have your business to attend to, Captains. I shall keep you informed of further developments. Consider what you have heard here today and whether we can turn any of this information to our advantage. For now, you are dismissed."

* * *

Rukia had an uncanny knack of disappearing into thin air when she wanted to. It seemed like something of an imposition to track her by her _reiatsu, _but when the alternative was searching high and low in every nook and cranny of the _sereitei, _it was probably worth the impropriety. And that was how Byakuya finally tracked her down to the training grounds in Thirteenth Division.

An arena had been hollowed out of the red earth and it was to this scar in the landscape that she had come, where members of the Thirteenth Division traditionally carried out their exercises. For now though, she was the only one: a single, lonely figure in black. Her captain, Ukitake, watched from a grassy slope nearly sixty feet above the arena's floor. As Byakuya approached, he did not turn to face him, but only only held out one hand, palm open, as if ready to receive a gift. Byakuya hesitated, and then he thought he understood:

"You misjudge me, _Sempai. _I have already given it to her."

It was a rare occasion when Byakuya could make his old mentor gape. Ukitake turned and stared:

"You knew. You were the only one who knew about Kurosaki, but you gave her the commission anyway?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

They were standing side by side now, the wind pulling at their robes and hair. Byakuya watched his sister:

"The commission was for her. The decision will be hers."

"You don't fool me, Byakuya. Since when have you ever cared about what she wants? No offence, Old Friend, but I had always judged that you would rather keep her in chains than have her risk her life in the real world."

Byakuya sighed. The sunlight was fading, drawing long shadows across the arena. How old was this place, he wondered? When had the first earth been shovelled away to make way for the training grounds? How old, even, was the man who stood at his side? Were it not for his pure white hair, Ukitake might have passed for a frail man in his late twenties or early thirties. In truth though, the _shinigami _had likely seen four, if not five, millennia. In Byakuya's own lifetime, Ukitake seemed not to have aged a day. The younger man wondered if he had really gone through that many centuries without encountering one of the most powerful forces of nature:

"I cannot protect her from everything, Juushiro," he said, turning to meet the Thirteenth Division captain's honest, blue gaze: "And I can't win this one for her, so I must admit defeat. On this occasion, I lose with good grace, my friend."

* * *

Byakuya waited that day until Rukia finished her training and could have no excuse not to walk home at his side. Some part of him was still reeling from the shock that she had answered back to him, in a captains' meeting. The impropriety of that though, he discovered, did not irk him so much as it fascinated him.

"It was my intention to tell you," he had said as they walked.

"Tell me what?"

So that was how she had chosen to play it. It was a side to her he'd rarely seen, but the cold shoulder, from his sister, was sufficiently icy to give him pause. In her indifference, she was almost regal, straight-backed and perfectly composed as she walked at his side. She gave him no cause for concern; not a whisper of emotion; not a moment's despair. No uncertainty; no fear.

Perhaps, Byakuya thought, he had been wrong to give her the commission. For all the good the human boy had done her, perhaps this would be too much. If he hollowfied, and Byakuya knew that he could, would she just freeze? Would she fight him? Could she fight him?

When he'd handed her the orders, she'd been at pains to conceal her delight. She'd taken the scroll and had stood there, reading it, straight and proper. A single nod and her blue eyes had met his own, just briefly, and there had been no doubt in them. No doubt at all.

And now it was the night before she was due to leave and, despite everything, all the doubt was his.

That afternoon, he'd discovered her in one of the spare rooms, asleep amidst a pile of books. An unlikely scene. Even as a student, she'd never been a keen reader; a life on the streets of Rukongai had not imbued her with a love of literature or any other of the arts. Yet they'd been spread about her, opened to various pages, marked off with hastily prepared bookmarks, notes scrawled in the margins. He could move silently when he needed to, and he held back his _reiatsu _so as not to disturb her. Crouching down and taking one book, he'd read just a few of the words she'd underlined, and several things fell into place.

Hollows. She was researching hollows. More specifically, the combining of hollow and _shinigami _energies through hybridisation or possession.

"Why did you stop her from speaking?" Ukitake had asked him after the captains' meeting. "She was going to accuse Urahara and you stopped her. What reason would you have to protect him?"

"Urahara's strong," he'd replied.

"You believe he'll be useful in this war?"

"Can you say with any certainty, after all these years, that even you could best him in a fight?" Byakuya had asked.

Ukitake considered this:

"No," he said: "Not for sure. I don't know what training he has undertaken or, given his past, whether he has been able to modify himself. But as an ally in this war, Byakuya-_sama? _I'm not even sure whose side he's on!"

"My point exactly." He'd looked straight at the Thirteenth Division Captain: "Tell me: what made you think it was Urahara I was protecting?"

"Rukia?" Ukitake blinked, then frowned and shook his head: "You're going about this the wrong way. Preventing her questions won't strike suspicions from her mind."

"No, but she won't act unless she is sure."

"You should credit her with more sense," Ukitake said gently: "Who is to say she would act under any circumstances against someone so much stronger?"

"Hisana used to get ideas in her head," he'd answered: "If she cared about it enough she was willing to risk everything. She didn't believe she could die" –

"But this is Rukia" –

"And she has found something she cares about."

He let the hand holding the book drop to his side and didn't even notice as it slid out from between his fingers to fall open on the wooden floor beside Rukia's sleeping figure. He wasn't certain anymore if the thing she cared about was in her past or in her future. But he had seen this scene before. He had seen his wife holed up in one of the many empty rooms in his house, kneeling at a writing desk, frantically recalling her observations from the day as if somewhere, somehow, in those sentences, she would find a clue. Something that would make sense out of the senseless. The one thing that would bring her peace.

She had never found it in the words she gave up to posterity. Rukia, he knew, would not find it in the half-read and annotated books.

Yet he hadn't seen her in the gardens these past two mornings, and he'd not sensed her terror in the night, which led him to suspect that rather than having found a means to prevent the nightmares, she had taken to staying awake until the early hours of the dawn so as not to trouble him. With that in mind, he left her sleeping in the thin winter sunlight that streamed in through high windows.

The dead of this world did not return, but they did linger, he thought, as he prepared to retire. Memories were like blades. Over time, they blunted, but it was different at night when they were as sharp and dangerous as ever. He lay with his face turned towards the place where Hisana had slept. Between waking and dreaming, there was a middle ground in which phantoms resided. He had become accustomed to them over the years. In this purgatory, he could feel her lying beside him, the angles of her body pressed up against his, only to dissolve as he shifted his weight on the bed. Or he would sense her seat herself close to him on the covers and he would reach out. Every time, without fail, he would reach out.


	5. It Changes and it Stays the Same

CHAPTER 5: IT CHANGES AND IT STAYS THE SAME

Ichigo was different.

Rukia was immediately aware of the change. She watched him walk home from school, head down, face set in that perpetual frown she'd become so accustomed to. It was his eyes she noticed though. They were harder than she remembered and they held a strange breed of fear, buried deep, but still so clear to her. And then there was his _reiatsu; _it was obscured. For most _shinigami, _such a technique would take years to learn, but she sensed that Ichigo had developed it out of necessity. He was smothering his own energy, denying it. He kept it concealed even when he killed a small hollow that afternoon. He could have finished it far more cleanly had he used his _bankai_, but he was holding himself back.

She should have been worried. She should have been afraid for him. She wasn't. Right now, she was pissed off.

The moment she'd set foot in this world, even dampened and smothered by his own fears, she'd still been able to feel his _reiatsu. _Her powers had returned fully and she was sensing it for the first time and, despite herself, she found it intoxicating. She had convinced herself that it would be the same for him, that he would surely become aware of her the moment she entered into his dimension.

Yet she'd been here for one full day now and he was oblivious. Like now. She was standing on the roof outside his window, her back to the wall so that he might not actually see her. Still, even through bricks and mortar there could have been no more than a few feet between them and yet he was completely unaware of her presence. He had plugged himself into one of those music devices and had closed his eyes on the world.

So consumed was he by his perfect misery that, it seemed to her, he had no intention of letting anyone mess it up. Well, she sure as hell was going to mess it up. It would be her pleasure and he would thank her for it.

Just. Not yet.

She slid down into a half-crouch on the rooftop. Banks of cloud obscured the sunset, so she was only aware of the encroaching dark and the rain that fell against her skin. If she so chose, she could change the density of her spirit body and let it fall straight through her, but for now, she chose to remain this way; she didn't mind the gentle touch of the living world.

* * *

That evening, she walked slowly back to the shrine on the other side of town.

It was customary for _shinigami _in the world of the living, if they weren't in _gigai, _to take up residence in a local shrine. It seemed only fitting. The humans built these temples to their gods so was it so much of an imposition for their gods, on occasion, to use them?

The pennants were heavy with rain water. As she entered through the main gate, Rukia noticed that most of the smaller shrines were now deserted, although a small crowd of humans was gathered around the main altar. As she approached, she realised why.

Leaning nonchalantly against the collection box, Renji was watching as the humans threw in their coins. Now and again, he would reach out and, effortlessly, pluck one from the air. For the humans, who could see the money, but not the hand that held it, the floating coins were nothing short of miraculous.

"Renji!" She managed to imbue the syllables of his name with such disgust and disapproval that he dropped his latest plaything and it went thunk-thunking down between the slots of the box.

"What?" he complained as she stalked past.

He seemed torn, briefly, between following her and continuing to watch the strange rituals of the humans. Then he unfolded from his place and fell into step beside her as they walked around to the back of the shrine:

"There are rules you know, and that is a breach of conduct."

"You sound just like your brother," he said. The look she flashed at him should have shut him up, but he clearly wasn't in the mood for taking a hint: "Remind me why I, as a lieutenant, am taking orders from you anyway?"

"You're not taking orders from me. You're taking orders from Hitsugaya-_taichou."_

"Was it his idea to hole up here while you go off gallavanting with your human friends?"

"There was no gallavanting, and he is listening to my suggestions, not following my orders." She checked that there were no humans about to see, then pulled open a door into the back of the building: "The difference is subtle, Renji. Don't strain yourself to understand it."

"You've gotten mean, you know that?"

She walked into the dim candlelight of the secluded shrine and froze.

The two members of Eleventh Division who had accompanied them on this mission were squatting on the floor and, having removed their _gigai _from storage, appeared to be checking the bodies over for defects. Rukia's _gigai, _and Matsumoto's too, lay discarded to one side.

"What the hell!" she cried.

Yumichika glanced up:

"Rukia-_chan!"_

"What are you doing?"

"Well, it occurred to me that Mayuri may have created an imperfect copy" –

"Put these away!" She stalked across the room and hooked her arms under those of Matsumoto's _gigai, _dragging it back towards the storage boxes: "Do you have any idea what the humans will do if they find bodies in one of their shrines?" The _gigai _were all dressed in the uniform of Karakura High School. Despite her illegal status at the time, the authorities had deemed Rukia's ability to blend in with human high-schoolers a resounding success and had sought to recreate it with this mission. Still, the effect was chilling.

"If they find the bodies, we can just get inside and then they'll just have six people. Living people."

"In one of their shrines. Why would high school students be living in a shrine?"

"Cool it off, Rukia," said Renji. He slouched back against one of the walls: "What's eating you so badly anyway?"

She didn't answer. She managed to get three of the bodies back into their boxes. Yumichika seemed reluctant to give up his. "Three months," said Renji: "And you're the expert on the human world?" Damn, she thought, that man is on a mission to rile me tonight.

"Do I look like this?" Yumichika asked, distractedly. The others ignored him.

"Did you see the prodigal son?" asked Ikkaku. Rukia nodded as she closed and sealed the boxes.

"And how is he?" asked Renji.

"He won't use _bankai. _He's taking stupid risks."

"You put that straight, no doubt."

She hesitated:

"No, I didn't speak to him."

"Huh?"

Ikkaku sat back with his hands folded over his knees:

"I thought you were our link to the human world, the only one the substitute soul reaper will listen to, and so on."

"I'll speak to him tomorrow. I wanted to see how he was doing" – without me. She didn't finish the sentence, but three pairs of eyes watched her intently: "He has a human life. He has other things to concern himself with, and it's only right" –

"Your sentiments are well-meant," said Yumichika who was now sitting with his arms around the shoulders of his _gigai: _"But largely impractical."

"Would you put that thing away!"

"Alright, alright."

"Touchy," murmured Ikkaku.

Rukia froze, half-squatting over one of the boxes. She unfolded slowly and spoke without turning round:

"Ikkaku, go and put a ward around this shrine and the outbuildings. Something low level to make the humans less inclined to come and gawp."

"Hey, you don't give the orders around here. Everyone in this room outranks you!"

She fixed him with a gaze that could have frozen the plains of hell:

"Really? You want to tell my brother that you pulled rank over the first lady of the Kuchiki house?"

Ikkaku opened his mouth, possibly to enlighten her as to his rich and varied opinions on the nobility of Soul Society, but Renji wisely slammed his hand down over the other's lips. He gave Rukia a forced grin as he dragged Ikkaku from the room:

"We're going for _kido _practice. Yay."

She waited until they were gone before forcing herself to relax. Yumichika was replacing his body into its box. Rukia sighed. She'd almost forgotten about him until he spoke:

"Things didn't go to plan then?"

"I didn't have a plan," she said without turning round.

"That may have been the downfall."

"The human world; it's not like Soul Society. You can't just walk in and offer people protection. They have their beliefs; they have their routines; they have all these stupid things that are so important to them. You can't mess about with those kind of things. So where do you start? Where can you fit in to all of that?"

"You don't," he said, so close to her ear that she gave a physical start. He was smiling placidly over her shoulder.

"What?"

"You don't. You're a soul reaper." As if to illustrate his point, he hefted his _zanpakuto _onto one shoulder: "We're not here to make friends. We're here to cut down the hollow, and right there; that's the end of the story. I don't care whose toes I tread on." She stared at him, then, without another word, she walked towards the door. "Where are you going, Rukia-_chan?"_

"Not far."

"Take care now," he said and, as she left, she heard the first genuine note of concern creep into his voice: "We do need you, you know."


	6. Losing Focus

CHAPTER 6: LOSING FOCUS

The following day brought with it a clear, blue afternoon. An open sky, polished clean by the winter sunshine was filled with the scent of the pines growing around the shrine. Rukia shifted where she sat on the roof. From the ground, the temple had looked perfect, but, once you were up here, you could see the chips in the tiles, signs of wear and tear, of he many stormy nights it must have weathered above the ebb and thrall of the city.

The pressure in the air changed.

The weight of the empty sky was suddenly so great she almost fell. One tile came loose and went skimming and clattering to the ground before she was able to regain her senses. Away to her right, she could feel a dizzying presence. Definitely hollow. But what was it? Far stronger than anything she'd encountered before, yet still it was increasing. Squeezing her. Squeezing. Sucking. Pulling towards it all the human souls. She felt the lights of their spirits wink out: five, ten, twenty. Within the space of a minute, it had consumed more than a hundred human souls.

She stood, frozen in shock. That hadn't just happened, had it? Within seconds, her bright afternoon had turned into a massacre.

We failed, she thought. It was too fast. We couldn't protect any of them.

Ichigo.

Her footfalls clattered over the rooftop and then she had sprung into the air. Falling. Falling down between the trees, she hit the ground at a spirint and made for the nearest of the temple gates. Only to collide with something solid and unyielding, and warm.

"Renji!" The communicator in the front of her kimono began to buzz insistently before he could respond. She fished it out and her captain's voice sounded loud and clear across the air waves:

"Rukia! Thank goodness! The hollow" –

"Yes, I know!" She turned away from Renji, but he cupped his hand over the device and bent so that he too could listen in:

"They're not ordinary hollow. We're calling them arrancar, hollow with broken masks like the one you faced" –

"I know!"

"No, you don't. The weakest one is at _adjuchas _level. That's greater than a _menos _and, with its mask broken, its strength increases tenfold. I want to make this absolutely clear: on no account are you to approach those hollow."

There was a moment's silence.

"Understood," said Renji.

"Allow Hitsugaya to take care of this. He'll protect the humans and, if necessary, he's under instructions to enlist the help of _Urahara Shoten."_

Rukia had stiffened. She could sense Ichigo now; he must have left his body when the pressure changed. The hand with which Renji had reached out for the communicator now rested on her wrist. He spoke urgently into her ear:

"You can feel it, can't you? You know that he's right. There's nothing you can do." He was foreguessing her.

"I still have to go."

"Rukia," came her captain's warning: "If you go, it will be in direct contravention of orders."

She heard the underlying threat. She could be taken off of the mission for this, at the very least. Possibly court-marshalled. And then there was Renji whose altogether too-reasonable tone suggested he expected her to do something stupid. She lifted the communicator to her lips:

"Understood," she said. The clear ground before the shrine. The dreaming pennants that welcomed the gods. A wind blew through the winter-dark fir trees as she clicked the communicator shut.

Renji relaxed.

Letting her head fall so that he didn't see her face, she started to walk back to the shrine.

And flash-stepped.

He caught her before she even reached the stairway down from the shrine. In the frame of a red gate, and for the second time in one day, she collided with his solid figure, making her suspect that the first time had been no accident. Now he was holding her shoulders, pushing her backwards, away from the stairs. He was more than half again her height; he could have picked her up and carried her back into the shrine, but he had the decency at least to pause and look her in the eye:

"Hitsugaya and Matsumoto will take care of it."

She wasn't fighting him. She remained passive in his grasp, staring straight ahead and through him:

"Let me go, Renji."

"I can't do that." His fingers dug into her shoulders, enough to hurt her and, all at once, she realised that he really did intend to carry her back inside if she wouldn't come of her own accord. Rukia needed no more than that. His eyes were on her face and, though he still held her shoulders, he was paying little heed to where her hands were. She twisted suddenly and, within a heartbeat, the woman he was holding had a blade at his throat. The edge rested, unwavering, on the soft skin above his collar bone and her expression was as steady and as uncompromising as the blade.

The panic was gone. Her fear was gone too. She could see every angle of her situation with painful clarity. She wouldn't threaten and she wouldn't demand. It would be enough for him that he had so thoroughly underestimated her in just about every way possible. "Rukia," he began.

In her abilities.

In her determination.

"What? Are you going to cut me?" he asked. His grip tightened still more and she had to force herself not to wince.

In just exactly how cold she could be.

He was a vice-captain. They both knew he could cut her down in less time than it would take her to force this blade through his bare neck. So this wasn't a battle of strength, technique or skill. "Nice bluff," he said, but she thought his certainty wavered.

Do you remember, she thought: do you remember the last time you held a sword to my throat when we were in the human world, and I was sure you'd never go that far. I was certain, deep inside, Renji Abarai, that you, of all people, would never hurt me. And with the next blow, you cut me and made me bleed. That's when I knew I'd misjudged you.

Let's play that game, she thought.

Very slowly. Painfully slowly, he lifted his hands away from her shoulders.

She moved around him, never taking her eyes from his face or her blade from his throat, so he moved with her, hands raised, until she was standing at the top of the stairs and he was behind her. With that, she launched herself off of the top step and landed on the air above the gate. Then she flash-stepped into the pale sky.

"Damn you!" he shouted, but she was no longer near enough to hear.

* * *

Ichigo.

Spirit pressures rolled like vast waves across the surface of a paper city, breaking over the horizon and sending squalls of wind through the parkland to the south of Karakura. Two belonged to the arrancar: noxious, even at such a distance; capable of squeezing the air around her, leaving a sense of nausea in their wake. A third had to be Ichigo's, but it didn't feel like Ichigo. Well, it did, and it didn't.

Her resolve wavered.

This energy; it was hollow. It was wrong.

On the _sokyoku, _she had been shocked to sense the breadth of his power. It had been like that of a dark sun: terrifying, savage, yet all at once tinged with something that was entirely his, something she recognised. No longer.

He was holding back. He was stronger than he had ever been, but he was holding back. As she concentrated, she felt his _reiatsu _fluctauate in strange, ugly bursts, like sparks from a fire igniting and spreading uncontrollably. He clamped down on them, smothering each in turn. She felt that. A deliberate act of will.

"Are you fighting?" she murmured, puzzled by what she was sensing: "How are you fighting and doing this at the same time?" And then she realised that he wasn't.

She couldn't experience his pain. It didn't work that way, but she'd had enough experience of reading his spiritual pressure that she became aware of a series of sudden blows, then an agony that consumed his senses, like a rushing in her ears.

Unthinkingly, she reached out one hand and thickened the air before her, letting herself slow from the blinding speed of _shunpo. _At least, that had been her intention. She'd been so intent on Ichigo's spiritual pressure that she'd failed to notice Renji's behind her, still in flash-step. And so it was that, for the third time, they collided. This time, there was nothing to break her fall, and they went tumbling onto the rooftops below.

She hit the ground hard enough to lose all concentration. Snapped back into the present and winded to boot, she struggled to her feet, trying to wrest what dignity was left from the situation. Renji was lying on his side, panting. He managed something that might have been a half-smile:

"Oops?"

"What's wrong with you, you fool?" She stalked over to the edge of the flat roof on which they'd landed and sprung up onto the railing. A bank of cloud had crept in across the horizon. The wind blew her hair across her face. She couldn't feel Ichigo anymore.

"He's still alive," Renji said. She turned. He was sitting up, rubbing the back of his neck, watching her with an irritated expression: "I don't think he's conscious, but, then again, what does he expect, going up against something like that?"

"I can't sense anything."

"I've gotten a little better at this stuff, " he said, standing up and stepping onto the railing so that he could come and stand alongside her: "Yeah, he's alive. Trust me. Kuchiki-_taichou _would have my head if I didn't keep my senses sharp, and he can sense a mouse from a mile away."

"The arrancar are gone, aren't they?"

"Yeah."

"You think he" - ?

"What do you think?" Renji snorted, stepping out onto the air. With a last glance back at her, he disappeared into _shunpo._

No, was the answer, she didn't think Ichigo had defeated the arrancar. So far as she could tell, they had simply vanished, but perhaps that was wishful thinking. Stepping into _shunpo _herself, she followed Renji through the winter sky.

* * *

From high above, the open parkland appeared peaceful. There was no blood, no mess. The arrancars' spiritual pressure had drawn out the souls of every human being in the vicinity of where the two soul reapers now stood. To a man, they had fallen into the semblence of sleep and it was only because she could sense no living flame, no spirit at all, in any of those who had curled up on the bright green grass, that Rukia knew they were dead. The only movement in the park now was the wind that picked idly at their clothes. Her hand crept to Renji's sleeve and she curled her fingers into the thick cloth. He didn't seem to notice. There was the same emptiness in his eyes as she felt in her own. They had failed. They'd been meant to protect them and they'd failed.

Hitsugaya, Matsumoto, Ikkaku and Yumichika were poised in the air some twenty feet below them, and, beneath them all, on the ground, stood Urahara Kisuke and Yoruichi Shihoin, carrying the body of a teenage boy between them.

What sense was there in being grateful for one life amongst so many? And yet, she was.

Soul reapers bore a duty towards all human souls. She supposed that humans themselves though, didn't, so that, in the face of a disaster, their thoughts were not for how many, how few? But rather: for him. For her. One name. One hope. A singular purpose. It made the world a simpler place, didn't it? No big picture. Just him. And the rest will fall into place.

Ichigo was coming round, she saw. Beside her, Renji stepped downwards and she tightened her grip on his arm:

"It's alright," she said: "We can keep to our original plan: approach him at school tomorrow. It's too much for today."

"What? You mean he can't sense us up here?"" asked Renji, hesitating mid-air.

"No. Damn fool was never any good at sensing spiritual pressure," she said, and her voice cracked over the last word, surprising her as much as it did Renji who gave her a long, hard look. Then he nodded and turned away.

* * *

His hands were bruised; the muscles in his arms and legs burned, and yet Byakuya Kuchiki continued to carve the air apart. First stance. Second. Third. Step back. Nothing showy. Simple. Precise. Each one serving a purpose; each one designed to end a life; perfected into an artform. No-one could be ashamed to fall to his blade.

In this, his mind was quiet. Silent even. Sliding along the lines of his blade, finding itself in the brief flashes of sunlight on the metal. There came a point when he was outside of himself, contained only within the colours and the movements. Without form.

There was no anger in this, no pride and no hatred. It was the great contradiction at the heart of his sword: it was designed to kill and yet, if wielded properly, at the very moment of death, the swordmaster should have no desire, no vendetta, no emotion.

"If you are angry when you kill," his father had told him: "You are a murderer. If you are afraid, you are a coward. And if you are proud, Byakuya, you are a fool. At that moment – within that moment – you are nothing."

The _dojo _in their summer-house had been old, older even than the one in the mansion, with a high ceiling and windows that let the light fall in narrow shafts. An overriding memory of his childhood was of training there, moving between those columns of light, the dust motes glittering in each. The sudden warmth as he passed under one and moved into the next.

The only place he had ever found peace was in that singular moment as he made the killing stroke. Another contradiction. But perhaps that one made sense for a soul reaper. He existed in order to take life. The rest was dream, pretence and fury. His doubts had been many: living up to the expectations of a noble clan, protecting the woman he'd chosen to wed, providing an heir to a family that could trace its line back to the Spirit King. He'd feared losing Hisana, and he had lost her. He'd feared being alone, and he had been alone. Now, he feared that he would lose Rukia too. But doubts were adornments; his purpose remained untouched. People, lives and loves floated at the periphery. The heart was the blade and the deep, abiding peace that came with death.

Switching left, he saw a figure dressed in white and, in one fluid motion, sheathed his sword.

Ukitake had indulged him. He'd asked for frequent reports on Rukia's progress and, so long as he was in the vicinity, Ukitake had given them in person. As Byakuya approached him, the older captain whistled softly through his teeth at the short display he'd just witnessed. Byakuya marched past him and wiped his face with a cloth.

"Byakuya-_sama, _I believe the Captain Commander himself could not rival your speed and accuracy," he said softly: "What inspired this today? I thought you would be with your men."

"My third seat is acting in my place today. I am out of practice. Unohana may have considered inaction a necessary part of my recuperation, but she seems to forget we are preparing for a war."

Ukitake's face became serious:

"One that has perhaps already begun. Two arrancar were sent to the world of the living. It seems that we can no longer doubt they are part of an army Aizen is amassing in Hueco Mundo."

"I sent you a hell butterfly concerning Rukia," said Byakuya.

"Yes."

"Were my orders carried out?"

Ukitake sighed:

"Your instructions were hardly necessary, given the circumstances."

"Hm." Byakuya leant back against the training ground fence and began to oil his blade, the simple motions acting as a welcome distraction: "You have high expectations of her. I appreciate that. I wanted only to ensure that they were not lofty to the point of foolishness."

"I told her that she would be acting insubordinately if she failed to comply."

"Still she went, I imagine."

"Not until the battle was over."

Byakuya hesitated, his fingers pinched around the sword's edge. Perhaps he gave too much away because Ukitake seemed puzzled: "You're disappointed? Were you hoping that she would disobey us?"

"Not disappointed. Surprised." He finished the ritual with the sword and resheathed it: "Thank you for letting me know, Captain."

* * *

In Rukia's memory, her _gigai _had been an uncomfortable, cumbersome thing. So it had come as a surprise to her to discover that wearing one felt a little like coming home.

Suddenly, she was back in the human world in a way she hadn't been before. No longer able to thin herself out to allow the elements of this world to pass through her, she now sat on the roof, a solid, living entity. The tiles of Ichigo's house were damp and hard beneath her palms. The morning drizzle soaked her and it felt good. It felt real.

"I thought I'd find you here."

She looked aside as Renji landed on the roof beside her. He was still in spirit form and a markedly different creature from the school-girl who sat balled up with her arms wrapped around her knees: "What? Are you spying on him?"

"I'm looking out for him. That's the mission I was given."

"How's he doing then?"

She didn't answer. Ichigo had not left his room since he'd returned from Byakuya's. The shopkeeper had treated his wounds and bandaged them so that no-one need remark upon the thin silver scars left after _kido _healing. They would fade in a day or two. He would make a full recovery, but, of course, it wasn't his injuries that troubled Rukia; it was the way his _reiatsu _kept changing: peaking suddenly as if he were in the midst of battle, then fading almost completely as he sought to smother it. At times, the flashes of power she felt were dark and alien, something altogether unfamiliar. It was as if two spirits were at war inside his body. She found herself longing for the _reiatsu _that she remembered, which had been warm and strong, which had surrounded her but never sought to consume her. She had felt safe. Knowing that he lived; that had been enough, until now.

Renji stepped towards the window and she looked up sharply:

"Don't. He'll see you."

The _shinigami _risked a quick peek then stepped back again:

"No, I don't think so. In fact, I think he's lost all focus." He hesitated, waiting for her reaction. When there was none, he sighed: "In fact, I don't think he's the only one." She looked at him askance. "What's gotten into you? The Rukia I knew would never have risked her position over something like this. We follow orders. We don't have to agree with them, but we follow them. You know why? Because otherwise the squads can't function."

"You disobeyed orders when you saved me from the execution grounds."

His lips curled back as if he was disgusted that she would use that, of all things, against him:

"For a reason! To save your life! Whose life were you going to save today? There wasn't a damn thing you could have done and you knew it!" He tapped the side of her head and she rocked back: "You weren't thinking" –

"You don't need to worry about me."

Something seemed to snap inside him because he stopped and suddenly bit down hard on his lip as he hunkered, coming so close to her that she had no option but to meet his gaze:

"I'm not going to worry about you. How about that? But let's get one thing absolutely clear: I am your commanding officer and, unless you pull yourself together, you're going to become a burden on this mission. Do you understand?" He straightened. She didn't answer and, after some time, he sighed: "You have your orders." And he stepped off of the roof, into the pale sky.

She stayed where she was and, after a moment, lifted her hands and studied the palms of the _gigai. _She'd not noticed how insubstantial her own body was until she put this one on. The rain collected in tiny pools along shallow lines in her skin.

She'd needed Ichigo to be safe. Strong. Happy.

The _gigai's _skin was very pale. It struck her that this might be the cold. It responded like a human body and she had been out here in the rain for several hours now. If she stayed much longer, she supposed, the pulse would become sluggish, the limbs heavy. Stupid thing. So much less durable than her spirit body. And yet, today, just for once, she'd have given anything to feel the cold.

* * *

Rukia was late. She sprinted across the playground and, instead of taking the stairs like any reasonable human being, she fell back on a childhood spent skinning her knees in the foothills of the Rukon. She'd scaled enough buildings in Inuzuri's slums to be confident that a thick drainage pipe would serve her purpose well enough. She shimmied up it as if the laws of gravity had taken a day off, and now she stood panting, gulping for air, on a thin ledge to one side of the window that opened onto Ichigo's classroom.

Damn it. Renji would think she'd skipped out on her orders again. Well, she was here, wasn't she? Even if her route up the side of the building had been a little unorthodox.

She felt the other _shinigami _enter the classroom and heard Ichigo exclaim each of their names in turn. She was meant to be with them. Oh well. Given the circumstances, this might even make her entrance a little more dramatic. She smiled at the thought.

"They messed you up pretty good, didn't they?" she heard Renji address Ichigo: "I guess the captain commander didn't think you were up to the job because he sent us to keep an eye on you." Rukia could imagine him, thumb planted on his chest, head tossed back in something like a challenge. He'd always seemed incapable of relating to Ichigo in any other way. Maybe the human boy needed that right now. Then again, maybe he didn't. Either way, she was done waiting.

She straightened and swung herself off of her perch, to stand on the window ledge. Her back to the bright morning sun. He looked up:

"Rukia."

"It's been a while, hasn't it, Ichigo?"


	7. The Winter War

CHAPTER 7: THE WINTER WAR

What was that expression? Surprise? Doubt? Had she caught him at a bad time? What an imbecilic thought! What exactly was a good time to step into someone's life and turn it upside down? He was right to be wary of her.

A few months had past since they'd spoken on that perfect blue night in the grounds of the Shiba mansion and later, with the sounds of laughter in the hall below them, she'd thanked him for saving her life and he'd thanked her, in his own way. Things like that, they didn't fade away, but sometimes she found herself doubting that they had all actually happened. They were too much like dreams. But, without them, where would they be? Back to square one? A human and a _shinigami._

Behind Ichigo, she could see Renji and, to her surprise, she caught the edge of a smile he turned towards her, brief as a flash of sunlight. So she'd done something right, she thought as she stepped forward into the room. Within two strides, she'd pulled on Urahara's glove and had reached for the boy. Cold laithed up her arm as her hand disappeared into his head. At least, that was what she saw. What the other humans in the room saw, she could only imagine. This time though, instead of pushing his spirit body backwards, out of its human shell, she gripped the source of the icy energy. Her fingers sunk into his hair and he gave a yelp of pain as she yanked him forward.

Outside of his body, he could no longer fully contain his _reiatsu _and it washed over her like a dark wave. She dragged him towards the window, still clutching a hadnful of hair, which, given their respective heights, meant that he was bent double, following her.

As they stepped out of the window, she threw one arm over his shoulders. She heard him gasp and felt his grip tighten suddenly about her waist as he lifted her, pulling her onto his back. It only occurred to her then that she was currently in a human body and therefore not adept at standing on the air the way he could. It hadn't taken him quite so long to figure it out:

"Shit, Rukia, what if I'd dropped you?"

"You wouldn't have dropped me," she said, adjusting her position so that she she could hold on with one arm around his neck. With the other hand, she fished Urahara's hollow detector out of her _juban._

"I thought you said I wasn't ever meant to carry you this way: while I'm a _shinigami _and you're in a _gigai. _Are you forgetting that people can see you? Most people don't take kindly to girls floating through the air."

"Whatever," she said, giving him a light tap on the head with the detector as she studied its readings: "Go higher then. That way."

He ran through the air in silence for a time. It was a grey day and she sunk down against him to protect herself from the whiplash touch of an icy wind. His spirit body was warm. But it was strange to think that, in this form, she could fall straight through him. As tightly as she held him, he wasn't really there.

Was that, she wondered, how he saw her?

No, he'd only seen her once as a _shinigami, _the night they'd met. At the time, he'd mistaken her for a ghost. Ever after that though, she'd worn a _gigai, _appearing, to him, as human as the next girl. And, in Soul Society, they'd both been spirit beings, as real to one another as anyone could be. Yet that didn't change the cold truth of what they really were. "Here!" She gasped as they almost missed their target.

He dropped onto the nearest rooftop, releasing her so quickly that she staggered.

"Rukia, why are we" - ? he started, and then he sensed the _reiatsu _of a nearby hollow and understood. Rukia scowled:

"You should have felt that before now!"

Cautiously, he approached the edge of the building.

At first, she had been concerned when the detector had picked up a relatively powerful hollow. Now though, she watched him with her hands planted on her hips. Timidity was not something she cared for or wished to associate with Ichigo. Setting her weight on herback foot, she kicked him, hard, with her right. He'd given her enough time, tip-toeing to the railing, to ensure that she caught him squarely in the back, pushing him from the side of the building: "Get down there!" she shouted after him.

The drop was probably too short a distance for him to force friction from the air. Either that or he was simply unpractised because, either way, he landed in an inelegant heap before scrambling to his feet:

"What the hell?"

"Byakuya told me everything," she called down. Now that she had done this; now that she had put him in harm's way, her heart was starting to beat double time in her chest.

"Did he tell you that I couldn't protect any of them? Chad, Inoue!" He reeled off the names of his friends, but she didn't answer: "Did he tell you that?"

"I know, Ichigo!" The hollow had started to advance on him. He had wrenched his soul-cutter from his back, but it remained wrapped in swathes of linen: "I know you've taken stupid risks since you got back; I know you haven't once used your _bankai _even though you'd have finished fights faster. I know about the hollow, Ichigo!" She couldn't see his face. He had turned towards the advancing demon. The power that rolled off of it was sufficient that she was satisfied he couldn't defeat it without his _bankai: _"If you fear that you'll lose, train until you become stronger! If you fear that you won't protect your friends, grow stronger still! If you fear the hollow inside you, grow strong enough to control it!" She shouted, lifting her voice above the hollow's scream. He answered with his own scream of rage. The linen rolled back off of the butcher's knife blade and its strange, dark power boiled upwards.

"_Ban-kai." _The sword changed. In place of the thick steel, a tapering blade. Beneath the boy's feet, the concrete cracked with a sound like a gunshot and dust and rubble began to grind into the air. The pressure came in waves, clamping remorselessly over Rukia's chest until it was only by finding their rhythm that she was able to breathe. Was this his way of controlling it? Releasing it in storm surges that broke repeatedly against her. Steeling herself, she scrambled over the railings and dropped to the ground behind him. She tried to shake off the feeling that his power could reduce the buildings around her to dust.

"You can grow stronger. You will grow stronger. Because that's the kind of man I know you are!" she roared. He sprung forward and the blade laithed down. A single, clean strike through the monster's skull.

Its scream was shattered. Its body broke apart. A sound filled the air, like water pulling back from broken glass and, all around them on the flat roof, the remains of the demon streamed upwards in fountains of blue light, thinning, thinning, until the dust and ashes had settled. Until there was only the winter sunlight beating down on the pale roof. Until there was just one human and one _shinigami _and he turned to look back at her over his shoulder.

Her breath caught.

A mask covered his face. White and red. A hollow's mask, yet small. Fitting his face like a human skull with rows of glowing teeth beneath scarlet stripes like tears carved into his cheeks. The eyes that met hers were pale yellow lights, shining out at her from a depth and distance that could not possibly exist within his person. She met that gaze. Yellow stars. The last time she had seen such eyes were in the last, bright moments before she had killed Shiba Kaien.

Ichigo turned away and, as she watched his back, he touched one hand to his face. She felt rather than saw the mask dissolve away, so that, when he came to her side, he was human again.

Save for his eyes. His eyes were yellow; the pupils, black.

"If I hadn't killed it, could you have defeated it?" he asked. She stared up at him. Did he know? Did he know about his eyes?

"No," she whispered.

He shook his head, then stepped up onto the air just above her and held out his hand. She didn't move.

"What?" he asked: "Rukia?"

When she looked up those eyes were a warm brown, narrow with concern. Still, her own gaze fell away from them, even though she let her hand fold into his as he lifted her onto his back. She crossed her arms over his chest and rested her chin against his shoulder as he ran through the winter sky.

* * *

Rukia sprinted down the corridor; Ichigo's hand was clutched in her own:

"Inoue! Hey, Inoue-_san!"_

The girl turned around, her long honey-coloured tresses bouncing around her face. Her initial smile faltered slightly as she saw the serious expression on Ichigo's face:

"Kuchiki-_san?"_

"So," said Rukia, dragging Ichigo to a halt before the pale-haired girl and looking hard at him. He dropped his gaze to the floor:

"I wanted to tell you" – he began, but it was little more than a mumble, and Rukia reached up to grab a clump of his hair, forcing him down into a sudden bow:

"Say it!" she bellowed.

"I meant" –

"Say it! Say, _I'm sorry I was too weak to protect you. I'm sorry; I'll grow stronger!"_

"I'm sorry that I was too weak to protect you. I'm sorry and I will grow stronger." He straightened and Rukia let him: "I'm sorry. I won't let you get hurt again."

Inoue stood, wide-eyed and staring. Her initial reaction was shock, then a breed of embarrassment:

"Thank you, but you don't need to – I mean, thank you, Kuchiki-_san," _she said, turning towards Rukia. To the _shinigami's _surprise, she saw a flash of something like pain in the girl's eyes: "Thank you." And then, all at once, she turned from them and fled down the corridor. Ichigo and Rukia watched her go.

After a moment, Rukia flipped her schoolbag over one shoulder and turned to the human:

"Shall we go back to your place then?"

* * *

Rukia hesitated as Ichigo unlocked the front door: "Don't you want me to use the window?"

"I'm sixteen! I can have friends back to my house if I want!" he said, sounding flustered. Yet he hurried her upstairs and straight into his room, leaving her to suspect that she was still to be concealed from his father and sisters. The curtains were drawn; it was a little messier than she recalled.

"_Ne-san!" _came a cry and the plushie, Kon, which they had once, in a moment of supreme misjudgement, imbued with an engineered soul, sprung from the bed towards her. The little creature had always had an obsession with her. Rukia was surprised that Ichigo had put up with it for so long. She caught it with a drop kick and it squealed in delight:

"It's smaller than I remember."

"Well, you can't go comparing this to Kuchiki's mansion," Ichigo said as he threw down his bag and took off his blazer. She smiled at his acknowledgement of her other life and started looking around:

"I can't help it. That closet has definitely gotten smaller."

"It hasn't. That's not even possible."

"You've filled it with your junk."

"Maybe you just grew a bit," he said, grinning at her and swivelling on the chair at his desk. Unfortunately for them both, in the silence that followed, his sister Yuzu could be heard quite clearly speaking outside his door:

"- In his room! No, no, she's not a bit like Tatsuki. She's more – girly!"

Rukia chuckled. Ichigo had turned a fetching shade of pink as he leapt up and pushed past her to get to the door:

"What's wrong with you?" he snarled, but footfalls on the stairs suggested that at least two of his family members had fled. Rukia pitied the small girl who was left standing in the doorway:

"Your dinner's ready, Ichi-_nii," _she said, brandishing a spatula as if it might lend some credence to her story.

"I'll be down in a minute, okay?"

"Okay." The girl disappeared and Ichigo turned back into the room where Rukia had made herself comfortable, sitting in the closet with her legs hanging out. She didn't need to say anything. She had spent long nights in prison believing that she would never get to see this place again. Now, here she was. It felt good. She felt happy. The events of the afternoon and the preceding days were eclipsed by the idea that things were right here. Mundane, normal and right. When she noticed Ichigo looking at her, she said:

"Your family seem well."

"Hm. What about you? How have you been?"

But if she had intended to answer, she never got the chance because, at that moment, the light fitting in Ichigo's room decided to unscrew itself from the ceiling and drop to the floor, where it shattered. In its place, first Renji's head, then his shoulders, then the rest of his body emerged. This was followed by Ikkaku's, then Yumichika's and Rangiku's. Yumichika dusted himself off as he padded across Ichigo's bed and settled down on it like a house-cat that had lived there all its life:

"Your attic is extremely dirty; did you know that?" he drawled.

"What the hell have you done to my light? How did you get up there? And what are you doing in my room?"

"This is going to be the headquarters for our operations," announced Renji, who had joined the others on the bed, although he seated himself with the air of a businessman opening a meeting.

"It's my room!"

"We have to make do!"

"Yeah, but I have to make do too!"

"We've come for a debriefing."

"My family's downstairs!"

"Ichigo," said Rukia in a tone of light warning and he fell silent. For once, even Renji looked serious:

"Soul Society is preparing for war. We're the detachment they've sent to the human world to ensure that our enemies don't break into this dimension first, but it seems they already have."

"Those hollows?" said Ichigo. The gravity of the situation seemed to weigh in on him and he lowered himself slowly onto the chair beside his desk: "They were stronger than anything I've encountered."

"They weren't ordinary hollows."

"So what were they?"

"You mean you got into a fight without even knowing what you were fighting?"

"They were _arrancar," _said a voice from the window. Seated on the bed behind the men, Rangiku gasped and tore back the curtain to reveal her captain. The white-haired boy, Toshiro, was seated in the open window.

"Captain! You came!"

"Of course!"

"_Arrancar?" _said Ichigo.

"That's why Aizen wanted the _hogyoku," _explained Renji.

"The thing inside Rukia?"

"Yeah. Turns out it's capable of combining the powers of _shinigami _and hollow. _Arrancar _are hollow with broken masks."

"But the _hogyoku _is not yet fully awakened," said Toshiro, picking up the thread of Renji's explanation: "Aizen is not yet able to use it at will, so his ability to create an army is, for now, limited to but a few _arrancar-_like hollow. We have reason to believe, however, that it will awaken before the end of winter. That is when the war will begin."

"So, what are you guys doing here?"

"The human world is potentially a training ground for the enemy. We need to ensure that doesn't happen. And, in addition to that, it may be that Aizen has an interest in you."

"You weren't exactly restrained when you demonstrated your powers on the _Sokyoku," _Renji reminded him: "Anyway, Rukia was chosen for the mission because she's closest to you" –

"I was chosen for my skills and specialist knowledge."

Renji continued as if he hadn't heard her:

"I was picked because I know Rukia best, and they let me choose someone I trusted, so I picked Ikkaku. Then Yumichika said he wouldn't let Ikkaku go alone; Rangiku said it sounded like fun" –

Rangiku laughed:

"Hitsugaya-_taichou _came because nobody else wanted to lead the mission."

"That's not true," said the young captain from the window ledge.

"Why else did you agree?"

"Someone has to keep an eye on you."

"What is this?" cried Ichigo: "A picnic?"

"No," the captain answered, fixing him with an icy gaze that allayed any suspicions the situation might be a light-hearted one: "We have a serious problem. One of the _arrancar _you encountered was an _adjuchas. _The other was a _vasto lorde."_

"A what?"

"There are three kinds of hollow," said Rukia from the closet behind him and Hitsugaya continued:

"The first level are _gillian. _That's the kind you encountered back in April when you were fighting beside the quincy. They're the weakest kind." Ichigo raised his eyebrows:

"They're the weakest?"

"Yes. The next level are _adjuchas. _They're of a smaller size, but still recognisably hollow. The strongest of all though are the _vasto lordes. _They share their size and appearance with humans, but they are hundreds of times stronger than the _gillians._Of the two _arrancar _who appeared in Karakura, the one you fought was an _adjuchas._ Its transformation from hollow to _arrancar _would have increased its strength a thousandfold, but the _vasto lorde, _the stronger of the two, did not even attack."

"But that would mean" –

"That not even a soul reaper captain would stand a chance against a _vasto lorde," _Hitsugaya finished for him: "We know now that Aizen has created one. It's been estimated that if he could create just ten of them, then they could overthrow Soul Society."

"Meaning?"

"The loss of the balance between the living and the dead," said Rukia: "The destruction of the spirit realms and then of the earth itself. The end of both our worlds."


	8. Finding You

_"Please, help her," Byakuya said: "Please." The tall woman turned towards him, her eyes a little wild as she saw just one more desperate figure standing amidst the carnage._

_The Squad Four barracks were in chaos. A fire had started in one of the poorer districts of Rukongai and, hot on its heels, riots had broken out in the streets. Security forces in the Rukon were being stretched. On top of that, an unsuccessful mission in the human world was bringing in a steady flow of casualties. And Byakuya was no-one special here. There were other officers who needed urgent treatment and, if he was but an officer, then the girl he was carrying was no-one. He saw that in the way Kotetsu looked at her:_

_"We're overrun – ah" -_

_"Kuchiki," he reminded her. The name she did at least acknowledge with a nod and a glance around._

_"I can't take her here. You're Sojun's son, aren't you? With Sixth Division?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Could you arrange for your captain's barracks to be opened" –_

_"I can open my own house if it is space you need, but I beg you" –_

_And at that, she had taken the frail bundle in her arms. That was how he had found himself here, back in his own home, but seated in the corridor outside one of the guest rooms. The servants had brought him a folding chair before they had hastened away to open the southern wing of the mansion to receive casualties. He hadn't wanted to stand. The thoughts and images in his mind seemed to scrape about the inside of his skull. He pressed the balls of his palms into his eyes, trying to press away the tiredness, but the moment he shut them, she was there: the woman he had pulled from the fire._

_She'd not been burned, though her skin was black with smoke. Yet when he'd lifted her, he'd discovered the horrible truth: that her face was caved in on the right-hand side. With so much blood, it was impossible to judge if there was any way she could survive. He thought first that the building had collapsed in on her, but there were no debris, and the angle was wrong. Something had struck her from the side. Something. Someone._

_He'd been angry. He'd been furious._

_He'd been too late._

_Too late to save her from the beast who had done this. Byakuya had found his body, but it meant only that he had escaped death at the young soul-reaper's hands, which was disappointing because Byakuya had savoured the thought of putting his hands round that neck and squeezing. Taking his life a little at a time with every narrowing breath. Slowly. Yes, it would have been slower that way. Slower than the fire. Slower than the blade he carried, which would have been too good a death for that filth._

_"Kuchiki-sama?"_

_He raised his head from his hands to see Kotetsu standing before him. Of course, he already knew the outcome. He could no longer feel the reiatsu of the woman he'd taken from the flames:_

_"It was a foolish hope," he said: "I thought that I could save her."_

_The medic blinked:_

_"I did the best I could. Her lungs are damaged; there's little I can do on that count. But I've worked on the head injury. We won't know for sure until she wakes, but I think she may make a fair recovery."_

_Byakuya stared at her, then at the doors to the guest room:_

_"But her spiritual pressure" - ?_

_"Oh, you won't be able to sense her. Not for now. I gave her a strong sedative. With a wound like that, you can't run the risk of a patient waking during the healing; the shock alone might have killed her. But a side effect of a sedative" - she turned and watched him as he walked past her into the room – "Is that her reiatsu is dampened."_

_Like most of the rooms in his house, it was sparsely furnished: just a low writing desk and a bed. He approached the latter cautiously, uncertain of what he would find._

_"No scarring," he said._

_"No. Cosmetics is the easy part," said Kotetsu, stepping into the room behind him: "The injury to her skull was severe, but so long as tissue is not actually destroyed, it can be repaired."_

_"You said her lungs" –_

_"- Were damaged from the smoke. That's different from healing a physical injury; it's more like a poison, and there's very little that we can do for such things. She is lucky though," she said, joining him in gazing at the woman on the bed: "The damage is minimal. Will there be others, Kuchiki-sama?"_

_"Others?"_

_"Will men from your division be bringing other casualties from the fire here?"_

_"No. Just her." When she continued to stare at him blankly, he added: "Squad Six was not required for relief duties today."_

_"Then" – Kotetsu's eyes widened– "You went alone?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Who is she?"_

_He considered the question. It had been inevitable and he had prepared an answer, although now he found himself wondering why he had felt any need to prepare. His answer was, of course, the truth. He had nothing to hide:_

_"Her name is Hisana. She is an aquaintance. My family have had dealings with her over the years." He need not admit that, on some level, their lives had become irrevocably entwined. He'd lived a long time. Since their first meeting there had been years, even decades, when he'd never caught a glimpse of her. Then, one day, there she would be, standing in the dusty street, just the same as the first day he had laid eyes on her. How this one soul from the Rukon could have gradually invaded his life, he didn't know. And nor could he explain the series of events that had led them to meet again and again: chance encounters, coincidences, the universe turning in such a way that it had finally tricked him into doing something foolish. Into bringing her here._

_"Do you know who did this to her?" Kotetsu asked timidly._

_"Yes, and he is dead."_

_She let out a long breath and then seemed to pause for as long as etiquette might demand in light of this revelation. Then, quietly, she said:_

_"They will need me back at the barracks."_

_"Thank you, Isane," he said, calling her by her first name and, when he turned, it was to see that her cheeks had flushed an elegant pink:_

_"Oh, it's nothing, really," she said._

_He waited until she was gone, then drew up a chair beside the bed. It wasn't nothing, he thought._

_Hisana was something._

_Their brief encounters in Rukongai had never given him much opportunity to study the girl. Now that she was in no position to accuse him of impertinence, he decided to take full advantage. This was a human soul; the first he'd ever come to know as anything more than a passing filament in the fires of life and death that burned on the edge of his perception. Kotetsu had cleaned the ash and soot from her face. He'd become accustomed to seeing her stained by the dust of Rukongai, which cleaved like a second skin to its inhabitants; yet, even so, he had always been aware of how thick her dark hair was, how its curl outlined a delicate face, how her skin was pale beneath the layers of grime. She was pretty. Not beautiful. Beautiful suggested a flower in full bloom, but she was like the buds on a winter tree, and, seeing her now, it seemed a wonder to him that she had survived this long at all. So who was she? Really? Her body was frail and yet she had lived. Whatever strength it was that had brought her through intrigued him more than the delicate slant of her lips, although, he realised, that would probably have been enough._

_He was enamoured with her._

* * *

It was dusk outside. The soul reapers had talked well into the evening, and now Ichigo leaned back in his chair and stretched, almost tipping himself backwards onto the desk behind him:

"So, where are you guys staying?"

Renji's eyes drifted up to the ceiling and the light fitting they'd disconnected to get into the room. Ichigo rocked forwards: "No! That's my loft. First off, you wouldn't all fit and, second, my father goes up there sometimes."

"Here then?" tried Renji.

"We don't have the space!"

"Just one of us could stay," said Rangiku.

"No."

"Oh please!" she cajoled him and, delicately, began to unbutton her top. Ichigo threw up a hand to cover his eyes:

"No! I'm not that kind of guy! Your wiles won't work on me!"

Behind him, Rukia snorted:

"It'd be more convincing if you weren't peeking through your fingers. But, more importantly," she said, glancing up at the other soul reapers: "Where will you go?"

"We'll find somewhere," muttered Ikkaku.

"I'm going to ask that sweet girl," said Rangiku: "She strikes me as the kind who doesn't say no." Rukia frowned:

"You mean Inoue? Strictly speaking, that's taking advantage."

Even so, it was clear that their meeting had come to an end and they began to disband. Rukia went downstairs with ichigo to bid the others farewell. In the end, there were just three of them standing in the street: Rukia, Ichigo and Renji. The red-haired man seemed oddly reluctant to leave:

"I guess I'll head over to Urahara's," he said. She nodded and, having no more excuses to hang around, he raised his hand in a farewell and turned away from the two of them. Ichigo was standing beside Rukia, his arms folded:

"What about you? Where are you going to stay?"

She flashed him a broad grin and bolted into the house. "No!" he cried: "Rukia, my dad's already seen you!"

Of course she could stay though. Of course she would stay. One sob story later and Ichigo's father was convinced she had been left high and dry by her own family and would be on the streets tonight were it not for his son's thoughtfulness. She was welcome in their house, he said, for as long as she had need of their hospitality.

Indeed, it was all going in Rukia's favour, right up until Isshin Kurosaki showed her to her room.

A fold out bed had been squeezed in between Yuzu and Karin's. A small card on the pillow read 'For Rukia.'

"Why am I sleeping here?" she demanded of Ichigo. He'd been sulking a little ever since Renji had broken his lampshade; now that things hadn't gone exactly to plan, he actually looked a little smug:

"This is where normal house-guests sleep, Rukia. You're a girl. Girls sleep in the girls' room."

"I'm a _shinigami. _I'm sleeping in your room, just like always."

"No, you're not." He moved to block her escape: "That would just be rude."

"But I brought some things to spruce up that dingy little closet o f yours. A picture, a reading light" –

He laughed:

"You don't decorate closets. Did you just call it 'dingy?' You were perfectly happy there back in April!"

"Yes." She bounded onto the bed, turned round and sat down, chin on her knees. She smiled up at him: "I was."

"It'll be easier this way. At least I won't have to steal food for you."

"And I won't have to put up with your complaints about being woken for _shinigami _duties," she retorted: "I assume you can handle that all by yourself now."

"Oh yeah, and I won't have to keep looking back over my shoulder for the next _shinigami _who makes it their mission to find you and cart you back to Soul Society."

"And I won't have to explain every damn thing to you!"

"That's my line!" He jabbed his chest: "I won't have to explain every damn thing to you!"

"Don't flatter yourself! We both know who was training who!"

"Oh, I'm not talking about _shinigami _stuff," he said, taking some sheets out of the cupboard and throwing them to her: "I'm talking about school, homework, packed lunches" –

"Are you claiming that introducing me to boxed juice drinks is comparable to my training you to combat the forces of evil and avert the coming apocalypse?" He barely faltered:

"- Polite conversation, human social customs, schoolfriends, days out, taking time off, chilling out, relaxing, enjoying yourself" – A pillow hit him squarely in the face, thrown with enough force that it made him stagger and Rukia fell backwards onto the bed, laughing. Her missile sailed back with less force and a poorer aim; she batted it aside:

"I know how to enjoy myself!"

"I meant without resorting to violence, Idiot." Ichigo ran a hand back through his hair and shook his head: "You really are something. Well, make yourself comfortable. Tonight I'm going to introduce you to family dinners."

* * *

_Kuchiki Byakuya, the Fifth Seat of Sixth Division and the Twenty-Eighth head of the Kuchiki Clan had aquainted himself with a number of officials within the judiciary body of the Central Forty-Six. He had connections to the royal household too, where the name Kuchiki still bore resonance. He knew people who knew people who knew people who were barely people at all because, at some stage in the spiritual hierarchy, beings ceased to have visual form, but existed, undifferentiated, in dimensions that even he could not enter. When he had first taken stewardship of the clan, he had been brought into contact with such powers and they had unsettled him. There were infinities that he could not conceive of and yet he had experienced them in the presence of these things, and they had jarred within him, disrupting what he understood of the world. There was this world, he realised, and there were others, and there were some in which he would never have authority because, in the great scheme of things, he was barely a mote of dust caught in a beam of sunlight._

_It had taken him some time to realise that knowing this was a power within itself._

_He would never be able to manipulate the higher authorities in the way he could play games with the nobles of Soul Society. Yet it was these very games that had led him to understand how political manouevering worked. It wasn't about power. It was about pressure points. And where he could squeeze the Central Forty-Six, they could, in turn, require the Royal Guard to look the other way. There were pressure points all the way up. You just had to know who to trust._

_Byakuya played by the rules. He'd never had cause to lust for power; he'd never needed anything beyond the rights and priveleges his position imparted; he had never, in all his life, felt a need to question the laws that governed his world: the balance between the living and the dead. For that reason, his reputation was flawless. He was trusted and he knew who he could trust. In the end, it had come down to something as simple as this: a bribe._

_"My master told me, 'we will abide by whatever he requires because his motives will be good ones, regardless of the task." The man speaking was seated on the other side of a partition wall. Probably the servant of somebody's servant because Byakuya had insisted he have no talent in the detection of spiritual energies. Even so, Byakuya still hid his own. He'd claimed he would not come in person, but, in the end, had decided to involve no others from his household._

_The item, an heirloom from his family, was placed in a small alcove, accessible from either side of the wall. Opening the wooden hatch on one side would automatically close it on the other; the exchange would be discrete and anonymous. "There is one thing he required of me though," the servant continued: "He asked that I question you as to what your master's purpose is, if you are at liberty to tell me."_

_"What do you know?" Byakuya asked._

_"Only that he is the head of a noble clan."_

_"And what makes you believe I am aware of his motivation?"_

_The servant chuckled nervously and Byakuya fingered the artefact wrapped in fine cloth: a medallion with an ancient family seal: one of the extinct bloodlines of Soul Society. Since it had ended up in the Kuchiki family's possession, it was probably wise not to question too deeply how they had become extinct. "Well, you may tell him that my master is saving a life that might otherwise be lost."_

_"His own?"_

_"Another's."_

_There was a long silence, then the servant spoke again, his voice serious:_

_"These papers are for the transfer of souls between districts of the Rukon. My master and I are not prithee to the knowledge that assigns souls to certain districts."_

_"Nor is mine."_

_"But it is certain that such an act would require an adjustment of the balance."_

_Byakuya winced. Even the servants of these people tended to have more knowledge of the soul cycle than ordinary shinigami. He was dealing with a man who probably understood his vocation more than he did._

_"It would," he said._

_"My master could effect this, but he could not foresee the form it would take."_

_"I – That is, my master, understands that."_

_"This life? Is it worth so much?"_

_For the first time in his life, Kuchiki Byakuya was gambling, and he didn't even know the odds._

_"Yes. It is worth it." Then he closed the hatch and waited._

_It was, he thought later as he sat by her bedside, too easy. Only those with the spiritual pressure of shinigami could be granted entry to the was the law. Yet the papers he was now carrying transferred a woman from the Seventy-Ninth district of the Rukon to the Central Sereitei. No explanation given. No questions asked._

_Hisana's reiatsu was not weak. Her soul was a little stronger than most others in Rukongai. But she was not a shinigami; she was merely an aberration._

_Still, he was glad he had found her, this aberration._

* * *

It was easy for Rukia to work around the routines of the Kurosaki family because, so far as she could see, there was no routine. This was what she remembered. Outside of the girls' room, the hallway was filled with the sounds of various family members screaming at each other to hurry up in the bathroom or go and do their chores. It was all good-natured, if loud. No-one was in charge. Certainly not their father. In the kitchen, Yuzu ruled with an iron hand, but, even then, mealtime without servants was a raucous affair, far more akin to messtime in the barracks than anything Rukia had experienced in her own home.

She was sitting on the bed now, switching through messages on Urahara's mobile device. Bulletins from Soul Society discussed, at length, the upcoming war and the power of the _hogyoku. _It was strange to think they were talking about the same item that Aizen had retrieved from her own body just months ago; the events on _Sokyoku _Hill seemed like a lifetime ago.

"Rukia!" The door slammed open and there was Ichigo, a toothbrush sticking out of the side of his mouth. He grunted acknowledgement of the girl curled up on the bed: "Just checking you're alright."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because" – and he delivered his next words in a loud voice over his shoulder – "Karin won't get out of the bath!"

"I changed earlier," Rukia said, effecting disinterest: "I'm just reporting in now."

"Finally!" he cried as Karin ducked into the room under his arm, dressed only in a towel:

"Ichi-_nii, _you're so rude!" She said: "And what are you doing, bursting in on Rukia? She might not be decent. Get out now! Get out!"

Rolling his eyes, he turned away towards the bathroom, but threw up his hands as Yuzu streaked past him:

"Hey! I was going in there!"

"Rukia, would you shut the door on my idiot brother?"

"Of course." She put down the hollow detector and climbed off the bed, flashing Ichigo her most charming grin as she shut the door in his face: "Good night, Ichigo!"

"Oh, Rukia," said Karin, behind her: "Your phone's going."

Her heart sunk. Indeed, behind her, on Karin's bedside table, the detector was beeping frantically: "You get lots of messages," Karin commented while ducking to dry her hair. When she looked up again, Rukia was frowning at the device. "Is it bad news?"

"Huh?"

"Is it bad news?" The young girl repeated and Rukia glanced up:

"Er….. No….. It's….. Please excuse me." And, with that, she left the room.

"Hollows!" Ichigo cried, as soon as she entered his. She'd forgotten that Ukitake had given him his own version of the hollow detecting device: a _shinigami _badge that made a repetitive howling noise when a hollow entered the human world: "Can you sense them?" he asked: "They're strong, aren't they? _Arrancar._ How many?"

"Four, five, six," she said, reading the screen on her own detector. She swore under her breath: "They'll target individuals with high spiritual pressure."

"Renji, Hitsugaya" –

"They can look after themselves, but your sisters" – she saw his alarm – "We're here with them so they'll be fine. Rangiku is with Inoue….. What about Chad?"

"Chad!"

"Go, find him. I'lI make sure everyone is alright here."

He used the _shinigami _badge to step out of his body and she watched him stand up on the bed where he had just been seated. He'd never learnt to thin out his own spiritual form to move through matter, so he opened the window as if he were still solid and stepped out onto the air, pausing once to turn and look back at her. She was kneeling on the bed by his now still body.

"You sure you're alright?"

"Go!"

And he did.

She looked down at his human form. She would need to find Kon and put the mod soul into Ichigo's body, then he would be able to protect his sisters, leaving her free to go and join the fighting. In the meantime though, she reached over and closed his eyes so that they no longer stared, unblinking at the ceiling. He hated looking as if he was dead, he'd told her once, and she'd argued that it was just a body; just a _gigai _made of flesh and blood. His attachment to it was almost entirely sentimental. It was a vehicle for his life; that was all.

And that was why it really made no sense that she had closed his eyes.

This boy, this strange boy. In all the worlds she knew, though she had faced death in a myriad of forms, and dealt it too, he had brought her a kind of peace. Silence amidst the noise. Even if they were to fight side by side tonight, her head would be clear and she would be focussed. And that would be enough. "I'm glad I found you," she whispered and smiled because she knew he wouldn't hear.


	9. First Dance

CHAPTER 9: FIRST DANCE

Chad came past Rukia at a sprint. She paused in the dark street, turning to watch him. She could sense Ichigo and one of the _arrancar _up ahead, but she didn't think it was fear that made him keep running, avoiding her eye contact.

The air around her was alive with spiritual pressure. The instincts that allowed her to overlay this world and its heavy solidity with the lights and currents of the spirit realm tonight let her see where the other _shinigami _were stationed. All those who could would fight, she realised, would fight. This was the first incursion.

In the next street, she found Ichigo.

She had to force herself past her initial shock when she saw his opponent because it was a hollow, yet not a hollow. Its presence was like a rent in the landscape. The size of a human, seemingly male and dressed entirely in white, it was quite unlike any hollow she had ever faced. Bandages on its head covered protuberances that might have been horns. Its mask was not visible, but she didn't need to see it to be sure that it was broken. This was an _arrancar _just like the one she had faced in the woods outside of Rukongai, but where that had been a _gillian, _this was an _adjuchas. _At least ten times more powerful.

Ichigo wasn't going to fight this one, she decided. She could feel his _reiatsu _fluctuating dangerously, inching towards that ugly darkness then back again. He was angry too and that wouldn't help. Byakuya had taught her that. Don't step into a battle in anger. It serves no purpose but to distract. Intention and technique alone decide the outcome. Intention and technique; he had never mentioned strength. Was that because he had known, even back then, that she would be fighting opponents hundreds of times her strength? Intention and technique then; a little bit of luck and a whole lot of cunning. _Adjuchas _were dumb. It didn't matter that it was an _arrancar _and humanoid; it should still have a brutish mindset.

Unfortunately, she thought ruefully, Ichigo tended towards a similar mindset when fighting. In this case, out-witting rather than out-bludgeoning might be best tactic, which would give her the advantage. "What did you say to Chad?" she asked as she reached his side. He had one hand on the hilt of his sword, about to draw it over his shoulder:

"I told him to stand back and let me handle this."

"You're angry."

"So what?" He moved away from her, as if he intended to circle the hollow like a tomcat in an alley. With a sigh, she reached into her _juban _for a _gikon:_

"Stand down, Ichigo."

"Huh?" He stopped and glanced back over his shoulder at a girl, standing there, dressed in school uniform, arms folded stubbornly across her chest.

"You heard me. Stand down. I'll handle this one. You're over-emotional." She swallowed the _gikon _and stepped forward, out of her body.

Ichigo watched and she saw his eyes widen slightly. The reaction pleased her. His lips seemed to form a few words. In the end though, all that came out was:

"You're a soul reaper." She glared at him and he blinked: "I mean, you got your powers back."

"Of course I got my powers back. Soul Society is rich in _reishi, _so, while I was there, my body could absorb it, and I was able to restore my _reiatsu_. It's a bit complicated, but, given enough time and rest, I was always going to be back up to my full strength." She smiled a little at his expression: "Is this the first time you've seen me like this?" Technically, she'd been in _shinigami _form when they'd met, but she'd lost her powers so soon after their first encounter that it had perhaps made no impression on him. He hadn't understood what he was seeing. Now he saw and understood and she narrowed her eyes teasingly: "What do you think?"

"Enough!" howled the _arrancar. _

Fortunately, it was all the warning she needed.

It chose to attack from behind. It was hardly reasonable to imagine their enemy might wait patiently for them to finish reminiscing. And she defended herself.

Like the animal it was, it attacked with its full strength, demonstrating a reasssuring dependence on its own brutality.

Yet it was still the strongest opponent she had ever faced. Not that she wanted to let Ichigo see that. Not that she was going to let it frighten her. What use would she be in the coming war if she could not face this? Nothing but a burden to the rest of them, as Renji had said. Beyond the line of her blade though, none of that really mattered. Not its strength. Not her lack of experience. Not even the question of whether she would win or lose. Only that she not lose her nerve.

Its first blow ricocheted off of her blade, but not before she had to balance the flat edge against the palm of her left hand just to keep her own weapon from slicing back into her body. Damn it! The force of the attack pushed her back across the concrete. And no amount of thickening the air behind her could stop her feet from sliding backwards over the tarmac. When she loosened the barricade of air she had formed at her back though, the sudden increase in her momentum caught the _arrancar _off guard. It pulled back and she sprung into the air.

"Rukia!"

No, just watch, Ichigo. This is how we fight.

It was something he had never fully understood: that, in the human world, a _shinigami _had so much more than just the sword at their hip. There was the air, which you could turn into platforms and hand-holds. The ground beneath, the whole of the sky, and everything in between was your battlefield. He had never understood that.

She twisted in mid-air and the lampost that the creature had intended to crush her against became the next point from which she launched an attack. The _arrancar _parried with its own sword and grinned, actually grinned, out of that deceptively human face:

"Damned _shinigami."_

Over its shoulder, she could see Ichigo struggling to reach her. He was being held down by a perfect replica of herself: her _gigai, _currently possessed by a mod soul. From what she could see, it had him in an armlock now. Trust him to get himself in that position. He was supposed to be watching her fight. She was here to teach him. Well, he could damn well make the effort and watch. He could…..

The _arrancar's _next strike hurled her backwards, the impact shuddering through her body though she'd parried well enough. Alright. Enough of testing one another. We're both pretty tough, aren't we? Albeit in different ways. She grimaced and rubbed her aching arm, a gesture the _arrancar _saw as a sign of weakness because it screeched with laughter: "Give up, Soul Reaper!"

She lifted the sword so that it was across her body. It looked like just another defence:

"_Mai, Sode no Shirayuki. Some no mai. Tsuki shiro." _The sword spun in a circle and the tip touched the ground.

* * *

"_Do something fancy, Kuchiki," Kaien had said: "Kuchiki Rukia spends far too much of her time trying not to get noticed." _

_She hadn't asked him what he meant. He often said things like that, which sounded like insults, but which weren't. And he was often patient with her in a way she didn't deserve. Like tonight, when they should have gone home hours ago and night had fallen stealthily until the mountainside where they came to train was just one more layer of shadow amongst many and the trees, the jagged peaks, even the familiar angles of Kaien's face, were all limed with silver moonlight._

_They said that her sword in shikai was the most beautiful in Soul Society: an ice-snow zanpakuto with a pure white blade; the tsuba resembled a wheel and, from the very tip of the hilt there stretched a delicate sliver chain that ended in a silk ribbon, twice again as long as the blade itself._

_It was beautiful. She couldn't deny that. She couldn't explain it either. But they were wrong when they said it was white. Sode no Shirayuki responded to the moonlight. Sometimes white, yes; sometimes grey; sometimes the palest lilac. She reflected back the light of the night's sky as if, for all her beauty, some part of her still relished the darkness._

_Kaien, who had been standing, watching, with his thumbs hooked into his belt, came forward: "What happened then?" he asked._

_The ground had stirred. Rukia's spiritual pressure had begun to tear into it, lifting clods of dirt on currents of energy that chased into the air around her. A pale, white light had begun to radiate from her skin and, in that same moment, she had clamped down on it. The currents had vanished. The new silence was denser than it had been before. She sighed:_

"_Let's finish," she said._

"_Why? We came up here to develop your techniques and you've done no more than release your blade and give the grass a slight case of frost damage. Concentrate on your reiatsu, Rukia."_

"_I am!"_

"_You keep switching off. Every time I think we're getting somewhere….."_

_He approached her where she was now standing, her shoulders slightly hunched over the weight of the blade, which, after a few hours, seemed heavier than she remembered._

_But how could she tell him? How could she say she was scared?_

_She flinched as his hands covered hers and he lifted them so that the blade, too, was lifted, and the light reflected from it was on his face. He smiled, studied her, then, without a word, moved round behind her:_

"_Kaien-dono?"_

_This time she felt the smile. Actually felt it. A strange thing. They'd grown close. Too close maybe, if she was honest. She could read his spiritual pressure now with an accuracy that, at times, frightened her: those minute changes in his reiatsu that accompanied his shifts in mood. It wasn't mind-reading, but it was close. His smile felt like the touch of a feather on her skin._

_His hands closed over hers on the hilt of the zanpakuto, so that he almost completely encircled her:_

"_Concentrate."_

"_It's not that. It's….." She couldn't finish the sentence, but, as it was, she didn't need to:_

"_You don't have to control it." She flinched at how accurately he had read her thoughts. There was that smile again: "I know. It feels like you can't control it, right? Like, maybe it'll burn you up. It won't. So let go. Relax. Shikai isn't about control. You have to learn to give up a little to the blade."_

_She tried. He was smiling again, just behind her. Distracting. She closed her eyes, murmuring:_

"_You think I'm a fool."_

"_Never." A note of sarcasm. She tried to turn towards him, but his grip on her hands tightened and he spoke into her ear: "I said concentrate, Kuchiki. If you're not going to listen to your teacher, you'll never learn. So do please concentrate. The soul of each shinigami is unique; the power inside you is unique. Your techniques are the way you use that power and they are what will separate you from the others. I can only guide you. Do you understand? Now, the release command of your sword, Kuchiki."_

"_Mai," she said._

_At once the pressure began to build around them. She felt Kaien match hers with his own and the ground beneath them shivered as if something moved through it, shaking off streams of dust that began to dance into the air: "Sode no Shirayuki," she said._

"_Everyone's sword technique is different, but you already know the element your zanpakuto channels," he said, as if he was trying to distract her from the terrific pressure building all around them. Kaien's reiatsu was aligned to water; her own, to ice. They were different, yet complimentary. And now she felt her own power push forward beyond the bounds she had previously allowed herself and he matched it effortlessly. The sword began to shake in her hands and she felt his own hands clamp down to steady the blade. It felt as if she didn't know where she ended and he began: "You know what your strengths are, don't you, Rukia?" She hesitated, then answered:_

"_Yes." Close combat._

_She always fought by rote, having discovered she was gifted at following a routine. In many ways, that was a weakness, but it was one she could sometimes turn to her advantage. It lulled her opponents into a false sense of security. Everything by the book until she decided it would be otherwise and by that time, she would have lured them in. So, yes, close combat. Any technique she developed should affect an area close to her body._

"_You know your strengths and there's one more thing. You have to know what you want too," said Kaien._

_There were things she wanted that she had no right to want and others she didn't even know she wanted yet. But right now? All she wanted was to reach further than she had ever reached before. She let herself glance up at the moon above. Sode no Shirayuki shimmered and flashed in its light, spirals of snow now winding down the blade:_

"_Some no mai," she said: "Tsuki shiro."_

* * *

Spinning the sword; touching the tip to the ground: she'd never known whether the motion was a necessary part of the Dance or just a way for her to mentally prepare herself. She had done it that night when she'd first learnt the technique, with Kaien's hands covering her own. She did it now, as naturally as taking a deep breath before shouting and that was almost what this was; like crying out with all her soul. The _arrancar _had engaged her now, blade to blade. The first few steps had allowed her to ascertain its strength and, certain that it had the advantage, it moved in close.

_Mai. _In which neither partner knows if they are leading.

_Mai._

The ground around them both froze, becoming a reflection of the moon above: a circle in which Rukia was the perfect centre. The _arrancar, _a spirit like her, sprung into the air and threw its head back, giggling as it avoided the ice:

"You think that's enough to stop me? The whole of the sky is my domain!"

Rukia flashstepped out of the circle. She was retreating, putting a distance between herself and her opponent. At least, that was what he saw.

Shavings of ice shivered upwards from the radius of the circle, seemingly the last remnants of her spiritual pressure. Yet, as the _arrancar _followed after her, passing over the circle in his haste, there was a moment when its eyes met hers and it understood exactly who had led the dance:

"All of the earth and sky is my domain," she said without emotion.

Ice roared upwards from the circle, forming a vast column.

Rukia felt the power tear through her. Practice alone had tutored her to remain calm and unmoved by the sensation. Yes, it had once frightened her and, maybe on some level, it still did, but Kaien had taught her that it was a part of her. She had no right to fear it.

A clean cut appeared through the column at the very point where the _arrancar _had been, immediately halving its body. If the cold had not killed it, it was now most certainly dead. Fast and effective. She had always wanted it that way. And now other fractures appeared in the ice, one after another, forcing it apart into smaller and smaller pieces until all that remained was powdered snow, drifting past her on the breeze.

With a sigh, she switched her sword back over her shoulder and turned towards Ichigo.

Then: "What are you doing?" she cried. The human boy seemed to have managed to escalate his tussle with her _gigai _into something closer to a brawl, and her replica was currently doing its utmost to break both his arms by folding them behind his back. She ignored that it was attempting this with an expression of malicious delight and, instead, addressed the boy: "Ichigo!"

"Rukia! Did you win?"

"What?" She scowled: "Of course I won. Otherwise I wouldn't have come back!" Great. So he hadn't seen anything she'd just done and, to add insult to injury, he was now looking at her with an expression akin to accusation, as if she'd been wrong to put herself in harm's way. She nearly opened her mouth to point out that he'd completely missed the point, but, as it was, her _gigai _chimed in loyally:

"Rukia has the power levels of a seated officer," it said, the sweetly cheerful voice sounding slightly strained through her vocal chords: "But somebody was afraid that, if she were promoted, the danger level of her missions would increase exponentially, so he appealed to the captains and the Captain Commander and asked that she never be raised to the seat of an officer." Rukia said nothing.

"Somebody?" asked Ichigo.

"Kuchiki Byakuya," said the _gigai _with a surprising depth of feeling.

"Hey, Rukia, what is this thing?"

"That? It's Chappie," she said, pushing aside her earlier irritation: "She's the most popular soul candy amongst the Association of Female Soul Reapers."

"This is Chappie? This is the thing you were going to put inside my body?"

"Yes."

"You know, I'm actually kind of glad we got Kon."

Chappie returned with new enthusiasm to the task of breaking his arms, as Rukia shook her head and returned her sword to its pre-release form, replacing it in the _saya:_

"That's enough. You can let him go now."

"Ow," Ichigo complained as Chappi released him, possibly more in lieu of wounded pride than any physical injury because he stood, brushed himself down and glared at the _gigai, _which responded with a bland smile. The expression was so alien to Rukia's features that the effect was chilling. "Well, I guess that's that," he said.

And then the sky fell.

At least, it felt that way.

"This spiritual pressure" – Rukia began, but there was no point in finishing the sentence. There was nothing she could compare it to: not Ichigo, not the _arrancar _she'd just faced, nor even her brother with his sword released. It was as if the night itself had fallen in on them. Chappie dropped to her knees, incapable of standing in the tide of such power, but Rukia responded by increasing her own _reiatsu _in kind. Ichigo too, did so intuitively. The combined force was enough to shake plaster and loose tiles from the buildings closest to them so that, suddenly, everything was in motion: dust rising up in streams from the ground; slates falling from the roofs to their right and left and, in the midst of all this, a man walking towards them through the air.

Rukia's first impression was that this was the kind of guy she'd learnt to avoid in the streets and taverns of Rukongai: hands in his pockets, all swagger and show and a smile that suggested he knew what he wanted and was going to take it. His spiritual pressure was like a cold hand sliding across her skin. Despite the clean cut of his white _hakama _and jacket, there was something bestial about him. His chest was bare beneath the jacket and his muscles rippled as he walked, but it wasn't this that she was looking at, nor even his head of extraordinary sky blue hair. No, it was the wide hole that passed straight through his stomach.

A half jawbone hung from his cheek, the vestiges of a hollow's mask. An _arrancar. _And not just humanoid. This one appeared entirely human.

A _vasto lorde._

"Which one?" It asked.

"Run," she said.

" Which one is stronger?"

It moved too fast for her to see and the pain that blossomed in her stomach boiled up into her chest and choked her. A pair of pale blue eyes that had taken pleasure in the suffering of a thousand others watched impassively as she coughed blood, her body rigid. What? She wanted to ask: how? But her head nodded forward. As it did so, she saw that he had plunged his hand into her stomach. His hand! Not even a weapon. But his skin was like steel, perhaps harder. Her own had put up no resistance. "Not this one," he said. With a sneer, he ripped it free of her body. Ichigo screamed. She fell.

She felt the changes in their spiritual pressure. She lay at the roadside. Her breathing was fast and wet. Still she tried to stay awake. It wasn't fair. The cold was creeping up from the tarmac, crawling into her bones. It made her realise that, for all of the injustice, she wasn't going to fight this one.

Ichigo, she thought: run, you fool.


	10. On Our Own

CHAPTER 10: ON OUR OWN

Byakuya hurried through the darkness towards the Twelfth Division barracks.

Twelfth Division was responsible for research and development and, as such, their buildings were full of the latest technology; nearly every room appeared, to Kuchiki Byakuya, as a homage to those decadent systems: low lights, glowing screens, meaningless sequences of numbers. Not only were the people subservient to their machines here, but, as Byakuya stepped inside he recalled that the sharp contrasts of light and shade in these halls were disorientating. No other division's barracks were designed with so little respect for the men housed within.

Deep inside the bowels of the building, the main observation room processed all images and communications Soul Society received from the human world, monitored ceaselessly by souls who, so far as Byakuya could determine, barely ever had cause to see the sunlight.

"- And that's when it was lost," Ukitake was saying as the Sixth Division captain entered. Ukitake Juushiro and Kurotsuchi Mayuri were standing side by side. The Tweflth Division captain seemed as menacingly cheerful and unphased as ever. He barely glanced up as the younger man stepped inside. The door slid shut behind Byakuya:

"What is lost?"

"Communications with the world of the living," said Mayuri, rubbing his hands. "Our last message from them was that between eight and ten _gillian _and _adjuchas _and one _vasto lorde _had entered the human world."

"I see. Are we sure?"

"It's been corroborated independently by Abarai Renji and Ikkaku Madarame," said Mayuri, and Ukitake picked up the explanation:

"Rukia was the last to make contact. She confirmed that they were targeting anybody with higher than usual levels of spiritual pressure, by which we can assume she means the humans too."

"Kuosaki Ichigo."

"I fear so." Ukitale tapped a series of keys and suddenly Rukia's voice was speaking urgently, reeling off a list of coordinates. She finished by saying she had secured the area and would be providing back-up for Kurosaki: "I was wrong in sending her, I think."

"She is capable."

Ukitake glanced at Byakuya, opened his mouth then seemed to think better of it. No amount of back-tracking or regret was going to change things now.

"We need to make a decision," said Mayuri: "With regard to the _gentei reiin._I called on – ah yes, here we are." As he spoke, the doors to the observation room opened and a vast shadow stepped into the room. If Byakuya felt out of place in Twelfth Division, then Zaraki Kenpachi was a brutal summary of all that was anachronistic. He towered over the monitors, more beast than man, looking as if any attempt, on his part, to use the keypads would result in the accidental crushing of delicate components. "Since Zaraki-_taichou's _men are also involved, it seemed appropriate that you all be here. We've run a series of simulations and have assessed that, without _gentei kaijo, _a captain-class _shinigami _confronting more than one _adjuchas _class _arrancar _would have only a fifty percent chance of survival. Thirty percent at the level of a vice-captain. Our last communication from Third Seat Yumichika was a request for a military funeral to be arranged for Madarame Ikkaku."

Zaraki Kenpachi snorted as if his fellow captain had made a joke. When three sets of eyes fell on him, he sighed:

"They're getting all the fun, it seems."

"The _gentei reiin _limiters are placed on captain and vice-captain class _shinigami _because their _reiatsu _are at a level where close proximity with humans could result in injury or death," said Ukitake. Kenpachi made a tutting sound in his throat and Byakuya frowned:

"Do we have any information on numbers of humans in the vicinity?"

"Unfortunately, no," said Mayuri: "And that is the difficulty."

"Fifty percent sounds reasonable to me," said Kenpachi.

"The endangering of human lives is strictly forbidden," murmured Byakuya, though it was more to himself than anyone else. His eyes drifted up and down the banks of monitors: "The question now concerns the nature of the advance guard. Originally, they were sent out to ascertain the part that the substitute _shinigami _might play in the upcoming war and to establish whether Aizen would move the battlefield to the human world."

"I have information in that regard," said Ukitake: "Kyoraku-_taichou _and I were researching the possible uses of the _hogyoku _and we came up with some interesting information. Alongside the _hogyoku, _it would appear that Aizen was studying an artefact called the _ouken _or King's Key."

Byakuya blinked:

"That's" –

"- The key to the realm of the Spirit King."

"Then his target is not us but the king."

"He intends to overthrow Soul Society. Since we exist to protect the king, then there can be little doubt that, if the king falls, we fall."

"We have not been called upon to fulfil that duty for nearly ten thousand years."

"Indeed. Yet that changes nothing. Who, in that time, has ever been powerful enough to challenge the king?" He glanced at the three assembled men: "The most powerful amongst us have always been the captains of the _Gotei _Thirteen. Gentlemen, we must accept that we are facing an unparalleled threat. How we proceed will determine the fate of both worlds."

"What is their purpose in sending a _vasto lorde _to the world of the living at this time?" asked Byakuya.

"I believe they are testing the waters. To create the _ouken, _Aizen needs an area rich in _reishi _and he has chosen Karakura Town. The creation of the key will result in the loss of every soul within."

At length, Byakuya said:

"He can use this as an opportunity to test our strength." Ukitake nodded:

"Then you understand" –

"Choosing to use the _gentei kaijo _will not only result in the loss of innocent human lives; it will give him an idea of how strong we are when fighting at our full potential."

"Aizen is no fool. He understands the power levels of the Thirteen Court Guards, but any information he can gather with regard to our skills, our techniques, our weaknesses: all will be useful to him. We need to decide whether we can afford him that advantage."

Byakuya shuddered. All these banks of computers, all these streams of data: they sat about in the dark and gathered information on hollow, which the Divisions then used to devise strategies that would target their enemies' weaknesses. Now he found himself imagining Aizen and his comrades holed up in a similar control room, formulating fail-safe plans to seal the individual fates of each captain within the _Gotei._

"The other option is to sacrifice the advance guard," he said. Their silence was suddenly as raw as an open wound: "Is it not?" It was a cold logic, but it was the truth, plain and simple. He glanced towards Mayuri: "You have not given us the odds."

"What odds?"

"Of a captain-class _shinigami _defeating a _vasto lorde arrancar."_

Mayuri sniffed:

"We have no data on battles at that level. Twenty percent; maybe less." He seemed offended at having to make a guess. Kenpachi grinned:

"Good odds."

Byakuya turned a blank gaze on him, trying to work out if he was being deliberately obnoxious or was merely unschooled.

"Aizen's troops are not yet at full strength," Ukitake said: "Kyoraku and I estimate that it will be another two months before the _hogyoku _is fully awakened. At that point, the war will commence and Karakura will be their battlefield. Do we therefore allow Aizen to goad us and, in so doing, reveal some of our secrets? Or do we, on the other hand, risk going to war without some of our best men: Hitsugaya Toshiro, Ikkaku Madarame, Kurosaki Ichigo."

Another silence and Mayuri shrugged as if it were neither here nor there for him:

"There's still a chance that some, if not all, the advance guard will survive" –

"Your odds are not good," snapped Byakuya. Though no emotion showed on his face, the interruption made the Twelfth Division captain's jaw snap shut. Mayuri stared at him and, after a moment, grinned, showing two rows of perfectly yellow teeth. Very slowly, he said:

"Good is a subjective category, Kuchiki-_taichou. _My odds are – accurate."

"I do not like them."

"That is no concern of mine."

Kenpachi giggled. It was an alarming sound, and Byakuya's frown deepened. Mayuri cleared his throat:

"Our last reports suggest that Hitsugaya and Matsumoto were fighting side by side. That would increase their chances of survival exponentially. Abarai Renji was alone. Kuchiki Rukia was with Kurosaki Ichigo. Hmm. The Kurosaki boy is a wild-card; I wouldn't want to predict the outcome of his battles. If Yumichika and Ikkaku worked together they might have a chance" –

"They will not," grunted Kenpachi and, when the others turned to face him, he added: "Leastways, they'd better not show their faces back in my squad if they choose that path. Division Eleven fight one on one, without exceptions."

"A pointless waste of life," said Byakuya. Kenpachi smiled again:

"Their lives are wasted entirely if they are incapable of defeating an opponent in one to one battle. My men accept that. If other divisions lack that discipline" –

"You are a brute" –

"Yet I'm not the one who, a moment ago, suggested the sacrifice of my own sister" –

"There are no limiters on Rukia or Kurosaki. _Gentei kaijo _neither increases or decreases the odds of their survival and, anyway, it would be wrong of me to base a decision on my personal interests" –

"Assuming your personal interests were in her favour" –

"What is that supposed to mean" - ?

A silent ghost, Ukitake moved between them:

"We are running out of time, Gentlemen." His fingers tripped over the keys on one of the monitors, but a series of entries only brought up screens of static. It was clear that communications were still down.

"It makes no difference to me," said Kenpachi: "My men are not handicapped by limiters. They will do their best and, if they fail, they will not come back."

"And the others?" asked Byakuya through gritted teeth.

" – Are not my men."

"Abarai Renji was one of your officers!" He forced his hands to uncurl from the fists they had made: "Mayuri-_sama," _he said, turning towards the Twelfth Division captain: "To ask my men to enter battle without their vice-captain is like asking them to fight blind-folded. No advantage gained by concealing our powers is worth his life. Or that of officers like Ikkaku and Yumichika. I advise the activation of the _gentei kaijo."_

"I concur," said Ukitake quietly. Mayuri only nodded and moved swiftly to one of ther terminals.

"The loss of human life" – said Byakuya.

"I know," was Ukitake's only answer. Behind him, Mayuri dropped one lever with a flourish:

"Limiters released."

Ukitake closed his eyes:

"They're on their own now. All of them."

* * *

The smell of cooked meat and spices and, somewhere, the warmth of a fire.

Heavy blankets, roughly woven, weighed Rukia's body down and, for a long time, she chose to keep her eyes fast shut. There was an excruciating pain in the back of her skull. Something had hit her. She didn't need to be a genius or even fully conscious to work that one out, but she wasn't yet sure how much damage it had done. She waited to see if she would fall back into sleep, but she didn't. Only now she felt a little sick. Dizzy in the head. Yet, at the same time, hungry, which meant she was probably going to be alright. Curiosity got the better of her and she opened her eyes.

A small fire was burning merrily. It had melted the snow on the surrounding ground where someone had erected a pavilion over both Rukia and the flames to protect them from further snowfall. The same person, presumably, who had all but buried her in a mound of blankets and was now cooking dinner. She pushed some of the covers back from her face. At the very edge of the light, a figure was seated, legs crossed, gazing out into the darkness of the forest.

This was her inner world, Rukia realised. She recognised the arctic forest with its vast, over-sized trees under permanent cover of snow and the decadent light of a full moon. But Sode no Shirayuki was not here.

"Hey," she tried, after a time. The figure turned.

His face was gaunt, but not old. His hair had perhaps once been black, but it was now matted and faded, as if he had been on a dusty road for many months. Wound into it were dead flowers and brown leaves and, across his back, he wore a fur stole. Beneath it, he was thin, almost wasted:

"You're awake. Good. I wasn't sure hoe badly he had injured you. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left it to chance." He rose and stepped into the firelight, moving lithely for someone who looked so ill, and he crouched down to remove a steaming pot of broth from over the fire. "Would you like to eat?"

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Rukia asked, raising herself on one elbow. He looked surprised at the question, and then said:

"Ah. I had hoped you would remember."

"Remember?"

"I am your _zanpakuto."_

She watched him ladle steaming broth into two bowls, part of her mind reeling. Another part though was betraying her. It's true, it told her. He is. He always has been. She sat up, rubbing a lump on the back of her head. Someone had hit her, hard. Maybe this was all part of a hallucination. "You can call me Hana," he said, as he ladled broth into a bowl: "Until such time as you remember my name."

"Sode no Shirayuki." He didn't respond to that, and she stared down at the stewed meat and vegetables he gave her: "Do you know where Sode no Shirayuki is?"

"What is that?"

"She is my _zanpakuto."_

His eyes widened a little. They were a deep sea-grey, she noticed, and watered a little. She wanted to ask if he was ill, but it seemed rude somehow. And, anyway, another part of her knew that he was ill. It was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Won't you eat?"

"I need to think." He reached over and took the bowl, continuing to eat without slowing. For such a tragically thin creature, he had a wolf-like appetite. "You get hungry?" she asked curiously.

"All the time now. It seems that nothing will sate it."

While he ate, she pushed aside the blankets, rose and walked to the edge of the pavilion. It was made of a loose thatch, just thick enough to keep out the snow, and there were dry flowers entwined into the roof. She could see that they had once been red: streaks of faded scarlet wound into clumps of yellow grass.

"Hana, do you feel the cold?"

"Yes. I preferred it when we had sunlight here, Rukia." She glanced back at the sound of her name.

"You are not my _zanpakuto. _But yes, I – I remember you."

"What do you remember?"

"The ocean." She put her hands over her eyes as if, by blocking out the present, she would be able to see the past more clearly. "Yes, sunlight. Daylight." She turned back to him, eyes narrowed. It was not in her nature to trust impulsively: "Who are you?"

"You are my wielder, Rukia. If not then how could I be here, in this world?" He rose and came to stand before her. He was tall, she realised. Much taller than Ichigo, so that, in stature, he seemed much more suited to the scale of her inner world than she.

"I don't know, but I need to find Shirayuki. You can come with me if you like." She turned back to the blankets, searching to see if there was anything she needed to take. There was no sword on her hip in this world. It was patently absurd to try and gather supplies for a journey across her own consciousness, so she turned back to her new companion. He had plucked a flower from the thatch of the pavilion. When she returned to his side, without her permission, he bent down and threaded it into her hair. The dead bloom lay against her temple. She reached out and brushed it delicately, half afraid that it might dissintegrate under her touch:

"Why?" she asked.

"This world is too dark for you, Rukia."


	11. Urahara's Secret

CHAPTER 11: URAHARA'S SECRET

"I thought we had some matters to discuss," said Ukitake.

Byakuya stiffened. His thoughts had been elsewhere and the old captain's spiritual pressure had been almost completely obscured. The streets outside the Twelfth Division barracks were otherwise entirely deserted, but he still checked around. "It's alright," Ukitake reassured him: "Kenpachi's retired for the evening. We should walk the long way home. What do you say, my friend?" They fell into step.

It was an old friendship and one that had altered its shape and balance many times. Ukitake had once been a mentor of sorts to Kuchiki Byakuya, then an equal. Now, in terms of their _reiatsu, _Byakuya was the stronger, but he had retained an unparalleled level of respect for the Thirteenth Division captain. Juushiro was a man he would entrust with his life in a heartbeat. He had entrsuted him with his sister's. "Why let him rile you?"

"Kenpachi is a fool who does not deserve the responsibilities he has been given."

"There are others of his ilk in the Thirteen Court Guards. They are our muscles. A body cannot function without all of its parts."

"I daresay we could function without him," Byakuya said, gesturing for Ukitake to join him on a path that ran parallel to the main one, through a moonlit orchard. When they were walking again, side by side, he slowed: "So little changes here. I walked here as a child. Do you remember?"

"Indeed. I remember the first time I met you and how frightened your parents were of you."

"Do I still frighten you, Juushiro?"

"You have never been my enemy." Ukitake stopped beneath one of the trees. It's branches were bare, allowing the moonlight fall between them and illuminate the Thirteenth Division captain's long white hair. He looked like an angel in the strange light: "I've never had cause to fear a friend," he said.

"And what about change. Do you fear change?"

"Change is inevitable, Byakuya."

"I walked with Hisana here."

Ukitake watched him pace, a dark shape in the garden:

"You sound like a man who contemplates his past in readiness for his end."

"I have long been ready for death. You are the one who always said we live too long."

Ukitake sighed:

" I had hoped that, after all this time, you might have found something to live for."

"Don't imagine you know me, Juushiro. I see no cause to share the things I live for with you or anyone."

He paced in silence while the white-haired captain stood patiently by. There were some questions he had learnt not to ask. Byakuya was a private man and he drew the lines between what he shared with others and what he kept to himself with the same efficiency as he drew his blade and cut down his opponents. When he paused on the other side of the pathway, Juushiro cleared his throat:

"There was something you wished to tell me."

"Indeed. It pertains to the war, but I am not yet clear as to its significance."

"Go ahead."

"I asked Renji to find out everything he could from Urahara about the _hogyoku _and his experiments. Rukia would have perhaps been a wiser choice. She is more astute at asking questions, but she has too much vested in this, and Renji can be trusted, I know."

"What did you find out?"

"We already knew that both he and Aizen were working on the same project. He is, unsurprisingly, cagey about how much information they exchanged, but it would seem that Urahara carried out his work on hollows while Aizen tested it on human souls." He hesitated: "Aizen's were the more successful experiments. Before he was able to create the _hogyoku, _Urahara's experiments created hollows, powerful hollows. Some had characteristics of the _shinigami, _though few were sentient. Others were capable of absorbing the abilities of _shinigami." _He saw Ukitake stiffen. "You understand, don't you? The creature that killed Shiba" –

"- Which is just as Rukia expected."

Without either seeming to make a decision, they started walking again between alternating patterns of dark and light beneath the branches. "Are you going to tell her?"

"No."

"Byakuya."

"She has enough on her mind. Perhaps in time. For now though, it is important that her focus is on the task at hand."

"What of Kurosaki? Can Urahara shed any light on his condition?"

"If he can then he chooses not to."

Ukitake stopped again:

"Ask Abarai Renji to bring up the topic of the King's Key. If his research was similar to Aizen's then he too may have realised that the quickest way to gain power would be through the forging of a new King's Key."

"A new one?"

"The original was lost or destroyed. Even if it could be found again, the creation of a new _ouken_ is by far the fastest solution." He continued down the path and Byakuya fell into step behind him: "It may be mere coincidence that he and Aizen were interested in the same things. Maybe not. What we do not need is to make an enemy of Urahara Kisuke before this war is won. Agreed?"

"Agreed." They had reached the edge of the orchard and now Byakuya stepped up onto the main road. He was only yards from the entrance to his home. He bowed: "I bid you good night now, Juushiro." He straightened and had already turned away when Ukitake spoke again:

"Would you know," Ukitake asked: "If she were alive or dead?" The question hung, gaunt, in the air. Byakuya did not turn round, and the Thirteenth Division captain tried again: "Do you know if she's alive, Kuchiki-_taichou_?"

"No." He glanced back over one shoulder: "But the boy is. It surprises me that you cannot sense him, Juushiro. His power leaks out between worlds."


	12. Prelude to Aftermath

CHAPTER 12: PRELUDE TO AFTERMATH

Concepts like distance and scale had little place here. A _shinigami's _inner world had no depth and no extension in any meaningful sense.

As soon as the lights of the pavilion were distant, Rukia stopped and listened. Things changed here. When she had first stepped into Shirayuki's domain, the sky had been a dusky blue; the trees had been those of the forests of the Rukon. Snow had covered the ground in patches. Since that time though, night had fallen and the trees had grown as tall as skyscrapers while snow had covered every scratch of earth and every branch. In both these things, it had always seemed to her that this place had become more sure of itself. The night here was a blanket. It comforted her. As her powers had developed, so the forest had thrived and darkened, while a moon had risen, which at times seemed almost as vast as the sky itself.

Snow fell sometimes. Not tonight though.

"How is she not here?" Rukia asked out loud.

"I thought you intended to look." Her companion hung back.

"If she were here, she should be _here_. Hana" – she turned to him – "There is no 'here' and no 'there' in this realm. I can sense her, but, why wouldn't she come to me?"

_Fear._

The answer was there. No-one had spoken, but even so, she shivered with the sudden awareness, eyes widening a little as Hana moved forward out of the shadows as if he meant to comfort her. She stepped back.

"Hana, tell me again who you are."

"I am your _zanpakuto," _he said.

"No." They faced one another. She'd lifted her hand, almost as if she could hold a sword extended before her and ward him off, but she had no weapon. "No, you are not my _zanpakuto, _but you are a spirit. I just need to know what kind."

"What if I told you I saw a woman here, dressed in white."

"When?"

"A few months ago."

Before her incarceration. Before the dreams had started. Rukia lowered her hand. She could sense Sode no Shirayuki like a shadow, but her presence was distant. The truth was, Rukia could sense no other living spirits but him.

"But I have been using her power."

"It is all around us, isn't it? The reason this place is dark," he said.

She took a step back from him, not liking the implication.

"Hana, you cannot stay here. I don't know how you have entered this world, but this is wrong."

"Before, when there was sunlight" – he took a step forward, reaching out for her – "I was never hungry; I was never alone. Rukia" – The fingers that touched her arm suddenly dug in and she balked, staring at his hand. It was lined like driftwood.

"Let go."

"Stay with me."

Something in the way he said it:

"You mean that, don't you?" she whispered. "Here. To never go back. To never live."

"Stay with me."

She looked up into those grey eyes, which were dull with sickness and recalled the sense she'd had in all those dreams, that there was something rotten inside her. A poison. Her poison. It was right here.

"Are we dying?" she whispered and he gave her a corpse-like smile.

"No, Rukia, this is just the beginning."

* * *

"Rukia."

That hadn't been her own voice, and it hadn't sounded like Shirayuki either. A sweet, feminine voice, yes, but not her _zanpakuto. _Someone else. A friend. Where had it come from? "Rukia?"

This time, when Rukia closed her eyes, there was a dizzying sense of the world shifting about her. She coughed and her shoulder blades jogged up against something hard. When she tried to turn, there was a wall behind her. No, not behind. Beneath. Heat blossomed in her chest and began to spread out across her body. She coughed again. "Rukia?" It was definitely Orihime's voice now. And there was no forest. No _zanpakuto._ She was lying on her back, her eyes closed. She could sense a light behind them.

It was a little while before the pain beneath her ribcage subsided enough for her to open them and then it was to the radiance of Orihime's healing. She wondered at being pulled from her dream at that moment, if, indeed, it had been a dream.

Well, of course it had. No-one had two _zanpakuto._

A few things fell into place then as she looked around: the _arrancar, _the _vasto lorde. _Ichigo was there beside her, she realised suddenly. His face was bruised: lucky bastard always got off so damn lightly. She would have wept with relief were it not for his expression, which was one of such sober concern it looked as if it had been wrongly etched onto so young a face. The light of Orihime's magic was reflected in his eyes and his lips were parted in concentration as he studied the wound in her belly. Only now those same eyes flicked towards her face and, seeing she was awake, he stood and turned away.

This wasn't how she had planned it. She had come to show him who she was: not some helpless schoolgirl trapped in his world nor an unfortunate victim of someone else's diabolic scheme. Not even the little sister of Kuchiki Byakuya. He, of all people, ought to understand that she was all of those things and none of them. And she was strong. And she was fearless. Sometimes, anyway.

No, she had just found a new and cruelly effective way to make him worry about her.

"Thank you, Orihime," she said, startling the young girl as she sat up. The healing magic faded. They seemed to be on a rooftop somewhere, and not just them but, over to her left, Rangiku and Hitsugaya, busying themselves with the devices that allowed them to communicate with Soul Society and, crouching at her feet, Renji, trying unsuccessfully to look as if he wasn't concerned.

Rukia passed one hand over the spot where the _vasto lorde's_ _hierro, _it's steel-like skin, had pierced her own. There was no mark: not even on her clothes, save for the still-damp blood stains and, though something felt sore, like a sharp angle deep inside her, she decided there and then that a mild stomach ache was a small price to pay for the events of the evening. Orihime was watching her with a worried expression and Rukia tried a reassuring smile: "You get better every time we meet!"

"Oh, thank you, Kuchiki-_san!" _The girl flushed with pride.

"Ichigo," Rukia said and he turned towards her, his face taut with emotion. She narrowed her eyes: "What's with that expression? Are you going to blame yourself for this? Please! This was all my fault. I've been doing this for years and I should have known better." He blinked and looked away, but her words hadn't eased any of the tension in him. She could try to convince him that she would be fine, that, next time, it wouldn't get the better of her, that she was capable of fighting her own battles, but that was all patently untrue.

She took his hand as he helped her to her feet. They both had a lot to think about.


	13. Merry Go Round

CHAPTER 13: MERRY GO ROUND

Juushiro was right, Byakuya thought: he was in a strange mood. As he crossed the moonlit garden, it seemed that everything had taken on an exquisite clarity, as if he might trap it all in a glass bauble and keep it locked away safely. His home, the garden: was it his imagination or did they not feel quite so empty as they usually did. He could recall days spent here as a child when he had been surrounded by family, and the lawns had seemed to stretch on forever. He'd pulled wooden toys on string across this grass; he'd dipped his toes into the cool pools. As a young man, he'd courted a woman between the silver branches of the _sakura _trees.

And now that they were gone, there remained only Rukia. Tonight, even she seemed very far away. He would know if she was dead, he thought. He'd not admitted such to Ukitake because he wasn't certain of the mechanism of it; he couldn't feel her _reiatsu: _it was too weak for him to trace between worlds, but she was alive. Definitely alive.

Crossing the decking, he paused at the door to her quarters. He didn't know why. Suddenly, the quietness of the house left him ill at ease. When she left, and suddenly he felt certain that she would leave, would this be how it was every day?

Had he really wanted her dead? He thought of her smile, which was rare, but as gentle as Hisana's had been. He'd grown accustomed to her silence, the way she moved from room to room as if afraid to catch his eye. Tonight's silence was entirely different and filled with memories. He pushed aside the screen to her quarters.

She guarded her privacy keenly in a way that he was not accustomed to. She didn't even let the servants into her quarters most days. She dressed alone, bathed alone, put up her hair alone, even though she had little skill at such things. She'd only had one house-guest in all the time she'd lived with him and that had been four weeks ago: his own vice-captain; apparently a childhood friend, though he couldn't recall either of them having passed the time of day in all the years that Abarai had worked for him.

Before she'd left for the real world, it had occurred to him that he wanted to clear out some of the unused rooms at the back of the mansion. It had been a day when another odd mood had taken him. He'd left it to the servants to clear the rooms, but had later found Rukia, with one of her dresses hiked up over her knees, picking among the boxes like a seagull on a scrap-heap. Indeed he'd caught her just as she had paused, straight-backed, in rapt contemplation of a tiny object in her hand. As he watched, she gave it a small shake.

"It's a _kidonno," _ he said. She managed to move with extraordinary speed to tug the kimono out of its make-shift knots and down over her legs. She often turned a fecthing pink at such times, but now she just brushed herself down and crossed the room to where he stood in the doorway, still gently shaking the device and holding it to her ear as if she expected it to speak:

"Are you throwing it out?"

"It's a toy," he said, by way of explanation, and she held it up so that it was inches from his face:

"It has a dragon and a rabbit and the dragon is chasing the rabbit. Ah!" She squeaked as the little contraption began to move. There was indeed a dragon, fashioned from copper and tin, and it span round and round on a circular track, its back arching and its body prickling with tiny lights. Rukia's face lit with delight.

"I believe the rabbit is a hollow, but yes, if you like." She was testing the device, moving it up close to him and then away again. It sped up and slowed down dependent on its proximity to his person.

"It's activated by _Nii-sama!"_

"By spiritual pressure." He took it from her and sealed down his own spiritual pressure tightly. In his palm, the small toy's motions slowed and then stilled. Her eyes were round. When she was enraptured by something, she had a delightful habit of entirely forgetting herself. Now that she took the trinket back, it began to move again, slowly. "Channel your own energy into it," he advised her.

She did and the dragon whisked round, its body sparkling, forever circling the white rabbit that may or may not have been a hollow. She almost shivered with delight, then glanced up with sudden concern as if she might have done something wrong:

"Can I keep this?"

"It's just a toy," he said, and then, seeing that she might have taken his reaction as somehow demeaning of her own, he added: "It might make a fair ornament if you wish to take it."

"Thank you!"

And she had bowed and darted away across the decking.

That same toy now stood proudly atop her writing desk. She had few possessions. It didn't seem to be in her nature to want to hold onto things, but there was a stack of notebooks on the desk, of the modern kind that might pass for affectations of the human world. She kept her work-notes in these, but insisted on doodling on almost every page so that they looked like the musings of a nursery school child. There were her clothes, but these were locked away in cupboards, mostly unworn. She lived in her uniform. If she ever did wish to marry, he thought cynically, she would probably do so still wearing that damned uniform. An ornate chest of drawers, a rail for kimono, a stool, another stand for her sword if she ever decided to take it off. Why did that bother him? She loved her work; she wanted to do well. Those were all things he should encourage, so why did it feel, sometimes, that she did them to spite him. He gazed down at the _kidonno_. If he stepped closer, it began to spin and the colours along the dragon's back began to change. In the silent room, there was something chilling about its eager motion and, reaching down, he placed his finger on the mechanism. The little dragon stopped.

Strange. She had pulled this from the boxes of rubbish. She had stood there, straight-backed. It had reminded him so much of Hisana.

_It had been their wedding night. He'd stepped back into the room and she'd been standing there over their wedding gifts, wearing nothing but a gold and ruby bracelet. In the candlelight, her body was brown. She'd put on weight since he'd found her. Like many of the residents of Rukongai, she had been painfully thin: all jagged lines and angles. He preferred the soft curves her new lifestyle had bestowed on her. She had been so still, standing at the end of the bed with her back to him, staring down. He'd crossed the room and put his hands on her waist. She'd been tense. That had surprised him. And suddenly, she had shuddered and put one hand to her brow._

"_I don't feel well." _

_He looked down. She had been gazing intently at one of their gifts: the little kidonno that could be activated by spiritual pressure. He couldn't even recall who had given them that. It wasn't to his tastes, but she had liked it when he'd first shown her how, even with her weak spiritual pressure, she could power the little toy. Now she brushed past him and seated herself on the end of the bed. _

_He poked idly at the trinket, then turned and joined her. She leant against him, skin to skin, and her breath fluttered against his chest._

"_How much were you trying to put into that thing?" he asked. Her spirit actually felt a little weaker than usual. It was just like her to overeach herself on something inconsequential and, as he passed his hands over her shoulders, he enriched her reiatsu with his own. The healing spell was so low level she was oblivious to it, though she did shiver and pull back so that she could kiss him on the lips._

_When her eyes looked that way, as if they were a dark liquid inked with reflections, had she any idea what she could do to him? She could have asked him for anything. He'd have given her his home, his life, his soul. Love, he had discovered, was not gentle or elegant; it was dangerous and it demanded nothing less than constant sacrifice._

_In the months leading up to their marriage, she had grown distant and that had been unbearable. Since she had revealed to him her past and the little sister that he had vowed he would find for her, the distance between them had vanished, but, in many ways, this was even worse. He had a desperation for her that no amount of intimacy seemed capable of quenching. It drove him mad that she was anything other than his, completely and in her entirety. He was jealous the moment she turned away, the instant she found fascination in anything else but him. His hunger was unreasonable, so he held it back and would not act, but, somehow, he would have to possess her. Not just her flesh, not just her heart, not even her devotion, but her every moment. Each instant that passed by left him hollowed out by his desire for her._

"_Was it what you wanted?" she asked and he realised that she meant the wedding. It was he who had planned every detail of it. Against tradition, he had worn civilian clothes for her. She gazed anxiously into his face._

"_Of course. You were perfect." She smiled, her expression languid, and rested her head against his chest while her arms wound round his neck:_

"_Not too ashamed of a girl from Rukongai?" _

"_Proud."_

"_Byakuya-sama."_

"_Hisana." Their names were like a mantra. It struck him that, to anyone else, this display would seem foolish, but he lifted her hair to his face and breathed it in and she pushed herself closer until they both fell back onto the bed and he was lying, facing her, just far enough apart that they could see one another's faces and bodies. He let his eyes move over her, drinking in her colours. He could not have paid more attention to her if he had painted her, but this was not a painting. She was vivid with imperfections that an artist, in all their austerity, might have missed: the messy fall of dark hair across her face, the slight tightness in her breathing, the uncertainty in her eyes as if she feared something and desired it all together._

_Proud. _

_Why was that so surprising? He had found something precious beyond words._

_He began to kiss her, persistently delighted by the way her body responded to his touch. He had longed for this moment, made all the more intoxicating by the staid tone of their ceremony. She'd been dressed in a traditional gown,w hich had swaddled her delicate figure, obscuring the more fragile lines of her body. Those blue eyes had watched him uncertainly throughout as if to follow his lead, but there was nothing that she could have done wrong._

_Something fell from the shelf of gifts. Somewhere, a screen door rattled._

_Byakuya pulled away from her so suddenly that she gave a little cry of surprise. He turned to look over his shoulder._

"_What's wrong, Byakuya-sama?"_

"_I don't know."_

_She curled up on her side as he rolled off of the bed and pulled on a gown, tying it loosely around his waist._

"_Where are you going?"_

"_I'm not sure. I just have to check" – he frowned and stooped to retrieve the kidonno where it had fallen to the floor. He stared at the toy, then replaced it while the tiny dragon danced to the rhythm of his spiritual pressure._

"_It doesn't matter," said Hisana. "Byakuya-sama – where are you going" - ? She sat up and wrapped her arms around her body in the semblance of something like modesty, and, with slightly less sympathy, added: "Whatever it is, can it wait?"_

"_I'll be right back," he said. Then, somewhat unnecessarily: "Stay there."_

"_Hey!" she called after him angrily, but he had already left the room. _

_He walked through their living quarters. Nothing was out of place. At the shrine in the anteroom, the incense had burnt itself out. Everything remained in darkness. A thin slice of moonlight crawled in through the screen door. Strange. He never left it unlatched. He must have been distracted this evening. Still, he peered through the thin crack at the silent garden. It was empty, the revellers having long since departed. Nothing stirred, and he pulled the door too and latched it before turning back into the room. He refilled the incense-holder and lit it again. Always the last thing he did before he slept._

_Back in their bedroom, Hisana was standing over their wedding gifts again. Her expression was troubled._

"_It was nothing," he reassured her. "I'm tired; I'm chasing shadows."_

"_It's strange," she said, without looking up: "I think one of them is missing."_

"_Which one is that?"_

"_It was a pendant. I think it was a pendant. It was given to me by that man who smiles all the time, though I don't trust the way he smiles. Still," she said idly as he wound his arm around her waist: "He is one of your friends."_

"_Ichimaru Gin is not a friend of mine. He is an aquaintance only."_

"_It is odd though."_

"_I'm sure we can find it. What did it look like?"_

"_It was about so big," she said, making a circle with her thumbs and forefingers: "And I was certain it was in a bag beneath the dragon toy. It had a design on it: a peacock, I think. Save that the tail looked like a rainbow. It" – she hesitated, catching sight of his expression, and, suddenly, she was gazing right at him: "What's wrong, Byakuya-sama?"_

"_Nothing." He picked up the kidonno again and began searching through the boxes and bags beside it. Hisana stood, her arms straight at her side, watching him. Eventually, she hooked one finger into the belt of his gown and said softly:_

"_You know, it doesn't matter that much. We can look tomorrow. Tomorrow, Byakuya."_

_He stared at the gifts, without really seeing them and only came back to himself when she stood on tiptoes and planted a chaste little kiss on his lips. After a moment's hesitation, he returned it with a passion that surprised her. She wouldn't understand. He needed more than her company tonight. He needed to lose himself in her. It was absolutely paramount that he forget what she had just told him._

_Because she had just described to him, not a pendant given as a wedding gift, but the very same noble seal that he had once traded for the elicit transfer of a woman from Rukongai into the Sereitei._

It was strange. He had no idea, even now, whether Ichimaru's wedding gift had been a threat or a promise or a message he hadn't properly understood. He and his wife never did find the so-called pendant that Hisana swore he had handed to her and Byakuya was never certain whether Gin Ichimaru had been the intended recipient of the item or whether it had simply, at some stage, fallen into his hands. One thing of which he was certain though was that Ichimaru knew what he had done.

He lifted his finger from the _kidonno _in Rukia's room and watched as it sprung back into life, the jagged clockwork motion filling the darkness with a soft clicking. Things that had seemed so important a lifetime ago now held very little reality for him. Hisana had described their marriage as a dream and, all too often, it felt that way to him too. Only he had woken to discover she had never existed.

If he had made her happy, she would not have sought Rukia, day after day. She would not have become ill, if he had made her happy.

He knew he must not let his mind wander down that road. He had thought it many times before, but it left room only for self-pity and despair, emotions that, ultimately, lacked all purpose.

Yet that did not change the fact of what Rukia had become to him: a reminder of all the ways he had failed to help Hisana, an atonement, and the embodiment of his regrets. For a long time, that was all she had been.

Not now though. Now, for the very first time since he had taken her into his house, he wished that she was here and that the house was not quite so empty of comfort and full of memory.


	14. You Were Dreaming

CHAPTER 14: YOU WERE DREAMING

Rukia woke in the grey hours before dawn and found herself disorientated. This was not her house. Light crept in through a window behind her and she could hear others breathing in the half-dark. Then she remembered: this was Ichigo's house. Not only that: she had slept.

She'd been too ashamed of her recent spate of nightmares to risk shutting her eyes with the others around. Spirit creatures didn't officially need sleep in the same way that humans did. As with food and water, it was possible for a _shinigami_ to go days, even weeks, without sleep. However, it wasn't particularly wise, since she was still capable of tiredness and that, in turn, bred mistakes. Now that she had finally managed a few hours rest, her body felt warm and heavy; a little achey from yesterday's exertions. But she could worry about that later. For now, the world was paused.

She moved to roll over and discovered something else: someone was holding her hand.

Well, not exactly holding it, but theirs was resting atop hers. She sat up sharply and, at the end of the bed, someone shifted.

Ichigo must have been kneeling beside the bed when he fell asleep because he'd made no real effort to get himself comfortable and was resting with his head on his right arm, while it was his left hand that lay against her right. She lay for a long time, staring at him. Snatching her hand back might be the proper thing to do, but, then again, his comatose presence wasn't exactly threatening. There was a line of drool from the corner of his mouth. However unorthodox this situation, it didn't appear conducive to anything untoward, though it was a good thing that his sisters were asleep, so they didn't have to see the deep crimson flush on her cheeks. After a moment's thought, she tried to extricate her hand from his. The movement must have woken him though because, all at once, he was there, leaning over her. She gasped and pressed herself back into the bed. He had one finger to his lips: _don't make a sound._

_No. _She shook her head. He leaned down and spoke into her ear:

"You were dreaming."

"Huh?"

"You wouldn't shut up. You were crying out," he hissed: "Yuzu woke me." He noticed then that he still had one of her hands pinned against the sheets and he sat up quickly, releasing her.

"But why are you" - ? she began.

"Shhh. I'll get us breakfast." And just like that, he had pushed back from her and he left the room, running his fingers distractedly through his pale hair as he closed the door behind him.

"Idiot," she said, softly.


	15. Morning Coffee

CHAPTER 15: MORNING COFFEE

She came downstairs to the rich smell of breakfast and human beverages brewing. Ichigo was crashing dishes in the kitchen and the radio was rattling off a tinny love song. She flopped down on the sofa and, finding a blanket there, wrapped it around her body, half-inclined to hide herself completely, but it was already too late for that. He peered out at her from behind an open cupboard door:

"What were you dreaming?"

"I don't remember."

"Must have been something." He went back to preparing their breakfast: "Yuzu was freaked out: said you were yelling or something and then" – he glanced over to see her reaction – "I tried, but I couldn't wake you. Still, you went quiet as soon as I was there, so I thought" –

"It's fine. You don't have to explain yourself."

"Just so you know – it was only so you'd keep quiet."

She watched him carry two steaming mugs from the kitchen and set one on the table before her. Then he stood over her, sipping the other. Only about a hundred thousand questions left unanswered then. She sighed, took a sip, and coughed:

"Ugh! Coffee! Yes, I remember this tradition!"

Ichigo looked blank, then, with a bark of laughter, set his own cup down and went back to the kitchen. He returned and began ladling sugar into her cup:

"Sorry, I forgot," he said.

"Thanks."

"So, anyway, how's things in Soul Society. I've not had a chance to ask you."

"I sense that _Nii-sama _is unhappy." Ichigo laughed and she frowned at that as she continued: "Until recently, he was housebound after the events on _Sokyoku _Hill and I suppose that must be awful for him. I tried to make myself of use, but" –

"What? You were serious? Byakuya's unhappy? I didn't think he was capable of any kind of emotion, let alone misery, although, come to think of it, I suppose that's more likely than a cheerful Byakuya, right?" He looked over and saw that she wasn't smiling. "Sorry. I know he saved your life."

"It's not just that. He saved my sister's life too." They hadn't had this conversation, she realised, as he looked up sharply from where he had taken a seat opposite her. "They were married," she explained: "After she died in the human world; after I died in the human world." His eyes widened and, as she sipped her suddenly-sweet drink, he raked one hand back through his hair, then met her gaze, creeping patterns of uncertainty in his own:

"You didn't tell me that."

"That I was alive once? Does it change things?"

"You have a sister."

"I had a sister," she corrected: "She died – in Soul Society – before I ever met her or Byakuya."

"That was the reason he arranged for your adoption then?"

She nodded:

"And he still misses her. I know that much. It must be hard for him" –

Ichigo grimaced:

"What? Is there some rule that he can't go find her again now that she's reborn?"

"No." Suddenly, Rukia was glad of the blanket. She pulled it up more tightly around her shoulders: "She wouldn't have been reborn, Ichigo."

"What?"

"If you die in Soul Society, you don't get reborn unless you die of natural causes, after your full time in that world. If the time is cut short, the soul can't re-enter the cycle. She's just – gone."

He stared at her:

"But – what about you?"

"Me?"

"What's natural causes for a _shinigami? _Aren't you, like, a hundred years old or something?"

"What does that matter?"

"It doesn't. I just mean, it's not like you're going to get old and die, like – like I will" –

The silence was sudden and complete. In that instant, a thought occurred to Rukia, as fleeting as it was absurd: that she would have liked to reach out for him then, to have forced her hand back into his own. Really? She wanted to say: you haven't thought about this? But he probably hadn't. His own view of the world had always erred towards straight lines. He simply had no patience for complexities. Aloud though, she said:

"I'll age. If I live long enough. As my spiritual pressure increases though, aging slows. I don't know how long _shinigami _have to live for before they die naturally and are allowed to rejoin the cycle." For once, he successfully found the meaning behind her words and, when he met her eye, there was a faraway expression on his face:

"I just always thought that, if anything ever happened to you, I'd come after you."

"What do you mean?"

"Like, if you died, I'd just find you again in the human world. I mean, I know it wouldn't be you exactly if you were reborn and that. I just – I just always figured you'd be somewhere."

"Oh, Ichigo." She sighed and leant across the table towards him. He was staring at her so intently and she had always liked the way those brown eyes too often betrayed his every thought and insecurity. Still so young and so incredibly trusting. He leant towards her too.

And she slapped him as hard as she could across the mouth: "Why the hell would you assume that I'd die first?"

As hard as she could was perhaps considerably harder than he might have given her credit for. He got up again, massaging his jaw:

"That hurt!"

"I meant it to!"

"I'm going by recent experiences, okay? The number of times, say, in the last six months, that I've had to save your life!"

"Well, for your information, I've lived a hell of a lot longer than six months – or fifteen years!"

"Sixteen!"

"I've plenty of experience of looking after myself!"

"Sure you have," he said, straightening and stepping away. He took his coffee with him: a little out of her range: "I'm sure you'd have been fine without Renji or I, or Byakuya. You don't need us." She glared at him in silence. There was really no answer to that which wouldn't sound ungrateful, so she let it slide and returned her attention to the sugary drink. "Will you be sent to fight in this war then?" Ichigo asked her at length. She set the cup down and nodded:

"We all will."

"The Old Man is pretty serious then."

"It is our duty to give our lives to defend the balance" –

"Hey!" He pointed at her: "Don't talk that way. Don't act as if your life isn't important." She looked at him with round eyes:

"What kind of _shinigami _would I be if I was afraid to face death?"

Ichigo frowned and stamped around the table to sit down next to her. She instinctively squeezed herself into a corner of the sofa. He didn't look at her as he spoke:

"Well, you know what I think? You're afraid of something. Whatever you were dreaming last night; it scared you."

"Then I guess it's lucky I don't remember."

"I guess," he said, glancing towards her. He looked worried.

"I have to examine your _reiatsu _before I report back," she said suddenly, eager to derail the course of the conversation, and he blinked:

"You need to what my what before you what?"

"I'm working. Remember? I have duties."

"Oh, yeah. _Shinigami."_

"_Arrancar _leave traces of _reiatsu _in your wounds, the same as any other hollow. The good thing about Orihime's healing is that it reverses the effect. Still, given your current condition, I think it's wise to check, don't you?" She knelt up on the sofa, facing him.

"Is there anything I need to do?" he asked.

"Not really. Just try not to block me out, okay?"


	16. Taint

CHAPTER 16: TAINT

"Hey, stop it! You're blocking again!" Kaien complained: "You're always so wary. What do you think I'm going to do? It's not like I can read your mind. Anyway, my wife tells me: this is where you have to start if you want to become really good at healing."

"Why would I want to become good at healing?" Rukia asked. She risked opening one eye to at least manage a half-glare at her mentor and tutor.

"You mean you don't want to become a healer? You weren't actually expecting me to teach you to fight, were you? A little thing like you?"

"Kaien-_dono _is an idiot," she said with finality, but she took a deep breath and closed both eyes again.

It felt like a fine stream of water being poured through her. Was that because it was him? Kaien's own spiritual pressure was aligned to water, so maybe that was why it worked its way into the metaphors in her mind.

"You understand though, don't you?" he asked. "In order for someone to examine your_ reiatsu, _you first have to let them, and then it's just about allowing the energy to move through you, the same way you would for _kido _or _shikai, _though, in this case, it's someone else's energy. Open your eyes, Rukia."

She did. He was sitting opposite her on the decking.

It was a warm evening and they'd trained for longer than usual. Both were due at an officer's meeting before dinner, Kaien as lieutenant for the division and Rukia as a note-taker, but there'd seemed little point in either of them going home. So they had walked through the barracks, which were deserted at this time in the evening, and had arrived here, where an arm of the building stretched out across a black lake and the deckings, which traditionally ran along the outside walls, were raised above the water on stilts. Lanterns adorned the awnings here, their lights reflected in the water. Kaien had removed his sandals and then his kimono and had spread it on the deck for them to sit on, so he now wore his _juban _and _hakama _only. Insects danced in the lamplight. Now and again, she saw the flash of a firefly across the surface of the lake. "You try," he said, and he closed his eyes.

He was three hundred, perhaps four hundred years old, but his face was young. Not unlined. All of them had scars, often too fine to see unless you were close to the person. Kaien's brows curved downwards, so he seemed, too often, to be frowning, but she never perceived that in his eyes. "You're just staring at me, aren't you, Kuchiki?"

"Er….."

"I know I'm pleasant to look at, but you could still try to concentrate sometimes."

"I'm trying it now, Sir," she said, wondering if there was any way he could tell she was blushing with his eyes closed. Probably. She reached forward and held her palm about an inch from his brow, letting her own energy gather in her hand. This was almost exactly the technique she would use for a _hado, _an attack spell, but she was copying what he had done exactly. Having gathered enough energy, she pushed her consciousness into it; it was a part of her after all. Then she let it move from her to him, passing through the spiritual channels in his body. It lasted less than a fraction of a second. A piece of her consciousness could not exist for long isolated from her spirit body. Yet, in that instant, she had a sense of him, more complete than the simple spiritual imprint in her mind. She couldn't read his thoughts, but she had been able to feel every part of his living body: how he sat with one foot tucked under his leg, the warmth of the lantern light on the back of his neck, the fingers of his left hand twisting the wedding ring on his right. "So, am I healthy? Am I happy, Kuchiki? What do you sense?"

"No taint of a hollow, Sir."

He opened his eyes, still smiling:

"Well, that's good, isn't it?"

* * *

The human boy's _reiatsu _was much changed from the one she remembered. She wished she could claim it was altered beyond recognition, but she couldn't. Whatever this shadow energy was inside him, it was still, fundamentally, him. She let her consciousness dip into his for just a second. No more. The technique Kaien had taught her allowed her to take stock of a single moment, but, within that, she found a dark, jagged entity permeating the familiar energies of the human she had come to care so deeply about. She opened her mouth to try to explain to him what shehad found, but no sound came out. They both knew it wasn't his wounds that she had been checking.

"It'll be alright," he said suddenly. She turned away. "It'll be alright, Rukia."

"Who are you trying to reassure?" she asked quietly. She slipped off of the sofa without looking up and headed towards the door. Ichigo stood up behind her:

"What are you going to tell them?" he asked.

"Nothing that you don't already know."


	17. The King's Key

CHAPTER 17: THE KING'S KEY

As soon as he had finished convincing his captain that not only he, but Rukia too, had come through the battle with the _arrancar _unscathed, Renji switched off the communication screen and scowled at her. She had been standing in silence, out of sight of the device so that Byakuya would not see her, though she was apparently not averse to communicating, through hand gestures to Renji, what she was happy having reported and what she was not.

"Don't make me lie to my captain!"

"What lie?" she asked, coming to sit down.

"We both know you'd have been one hundred percent dead yesterday were it not for that Orihime girl. If you tell Kuchiki-_taichou_ it went fine, I have to keep up the charade and try to forget your near-fatal run in with Mr Blue Hair."

"If he learns about it, he'll pull strings and make sure I'm redeployed in Rukongai or something, okay?"

"Not okay. He's my captain!"

"He's my brother! It's not like you have to live in he same house with him!" Her eyes dared him to challenge that particular trump card, but he merely sat back and stretched, far too laid-back to care. They were kneeling in one of the guest rooms of _Urahara Shoten._"What do you think, anyway?" she asked.

"What do I think? I think Aizen intends to fuck up the human world so he can create this King's Key. Then he's going to go back to Soul Society and break into the Royal Court. If we let him."

"And after that?"

"After that? Well, either the world will have ended or we'll all still be here."

"I mean, what does Aizen want in the Realm of the Spirit King?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"Perhaps," said a light male voice: "He wishes to change both the human and the spirit world." Urahara had pushed open the slide door and now he stood aside to let Captain Hitsugaya enter. The young captain stepped briskly into the room, radiating efficiency.

Age, in Soul Society, was a strange thing. Because of the slowing effects of _reiatsu, _a powerful _shinigami _could remain a teenager or, on far rarer occasions, a child, for centuries. For most, the slowing didn't begin until later in life, but Toshiro was an exception, and there was no exact etiquette for such situations. He was older than most of the officers in Soul Society, yet they still called him the 'Child Prodigy' and the 'Boy Captain.' In many respects, he was just that: a child, though one that had watched many years pass by. There was nothing young in those pale blue eyes.

"Explain yourself, Kisuke," he said as he entered and took a seat. The shopkeeper closed the door behind him and followed suit, so that they were now kneeling in a tight circle on the floor.

"Well, as you know, the realm of the Spirit King is the fulcrum."

"What's that?" asked Renji. Urahara sighed:

"It's the centre of the balance, Abarai. Does that make sense to you?"

"Kind of."

"It's the realm from which Soul Society and the human world and all others, the _Dangai _and even temporary spiritual dimensions, are born. From such a point he would, of course, have the power to close off and destroy any dimensions he chose. I am inclined to think he intends to remake the universe in a manner different to the way it is now."

"Why?"

"Perhaps he finds this one unsatisfactory, Abarai."

"And what about this King's Key, Urahara?" asked Hitsugaya. He had his hands folded inside the sleeves of his kimono. He watched the shopkeeper with wary, lidded eyes:

"The King's Key is an interesting artifact. It is said that, before the _Ouken _was created, the king had set a chain of events in motion that included the evolution of the spirit world and the human world, but he was incapable of acting within either realm. And then a powerful spirit – probably a _shinigami – _created a key that allowed him to enter the realm of the king. From that moment on, a royal family came into being. Through the noble families, the king was able to exercise control within the worlds he had created.

"Even now, the nobles of Soul Society are still granted access to some of the royal dimensions, though rarely for extended periods of time. As _shinigami, _our bodies are temporally dependent and incapable of surviving for long in a non-temporal world."

"Come again?" said Renji, and Rukia was relieved she needn't be the one to admit she didn't understand.

"Time, Abarai. We exist within time. The royal realm is outside of time."

"You lost me."

"There's no time there," said Rukia. Renji scowled:

"Yeah, I get that. What I'm saying is: I don't think that would work."

"Your opinion, in this case" – Urahara said sweetly – "Has little bearing on the facts, Abarai."

"All I'm saying is" –

"Urahara," Rukia interrupted him: "What did you mean when you said that the noble families still have access to the royal dimensions?"

His smile was just on the wrong side of eager:

"Not yet prithee to the family secrets, Kuchiki-_dono?" _ She looked as if someone had struck her in the face. "Of course, it is down to Kuchiki Byakuya to decide how he wishes to play the game. Unless you are of royal blood, it would be a grave transgression to enter any of the royal realms. I am not sure how they look upon the practice of adoption though. It may be that Kuchiki-_taichou _has decided it would be wiser not to use you to test their open-mindedness in that respect."

"You mean Byakuya has" –

"- Already visited his kin in those worlds? Yes. I assure you that that is the case."

"He has never spoken of it," she said, wonderingly.

"I do not know anyone who has. It is not the kind of thing that is easy to speak of, so I hear. Maybe you'd like to ask him." Her slightly sick expression was answer enough. Beside her, Hitsugaya cleared his throat softly:

"I am of the opinion that Aizen intends to strike sooner than we had anticipated. His soldiers are certainly strong enough, even if the _hogyoku _is not yet awake. Also, he could start the war here, create the King's Key and still have time to regroup in Hueco Mundo while we are licking our wounds. If he attacks the human world sooner rather than later, the _hogyoku _will awaken just in time for his assault on the royal realm. Thank you, Kisuke, I'm grateful for the information you've given us." He rose to his feet and Urahara rose too, bowing:

"Would you care to join me for a little tea. I had thought you might stay longer."

"Another time. I left Matsumoto to oversee the installation of a communication system within the female human's appartment." He looked a little embarrassed: "I hope to supervise some of the decisions she makes in its regard." Rukia could only begin to imagine what strange devices they were having delivered from the spirit world to Orihime's flat. Toshiro took his leave just as Urahara's manservant, Tessai, entered with a plate of tea. Rukia took some and helped herself to more sugar.

"So, this King's Key," Renji said suddenly: "How does that work?" Rukia glanced over at him. It was unusual for him to follow through on such a line of questioning. There was, after all, a strong possibility that neither of them would understand Urahara's answer. Even Kisuke himself looked a little surprised:

"Hmm. Well, to put it in terms you might understand, it's not so different from the devices we use to transport humans to Soul Society."

"The _senkaimon?" _asked Rukia.

"No, Kuchiki-_dono. _The _senkaimon _is a gate. Before a human being can be sent through, their body must be converted to _reishi. _Only then will they be able to interact with the spirit world. The King's Key works in a similar way. It transforms a body – say, your spiritual body – into something that is capable of passing into another dimension. And then it opens the gate to that dimension."

"And what kind of something" – asked Renji, around a mouthful of tea – "Is capable of surviving in the realm of this king?"

"Timeless entities."

They both considered this for a time, then Renji jabbed a finger at Rukia:

"So, if she's going to the Realm of the Spirit King, she first has to be outside of time?"

"Why me?" asked Rukia.

"Indeed."

"And how do you achieve that?"

"Well, that's quite simple. She'd have to die." Rukia went a little pale. "Her _reishi _is, in the end, nothing more than a complex spiritual trace. The secret at the heart of the King's Key is that it records this pattern of energy and allows it to be reconstituted. It's necessary. Nothing living, on any of the spiritual planes, can exist outside of time.

"The difference is that, when most souls die in Soul Society, their spiritual trace is lost. The King's Key reconstitutes the trace, so it is as if it never died. The only difference is, the soul is no longer bounded by time. It exists entirely outside of the balance." He turned a charming smile on Rukia: "Not like death at all really. Just like stepping to one side." She narrowed her eyes:

"Seriously. Why me?"

"Because you're nobility. Nobility gets to do the fun stuff," said Renji, jamming his fist into her shoulder. She glared at him:

"I'm not nobility, you bastard." Both Renji and Urahara ignored her:

"The newly-constituted soul opens a gate like a _senkaimon _and steps into the Realm of the Spirit King. Would you care for more tea?"

"Don't mind if I do," said Renji.

"I'm due at school," said Rukia, pulling her school-bag onto one shoulder.

"Live dangerously. Skip it," suggested her old friend. She gave him a sharp smack on the head as she stood up.

"You know," said Urahara thoughtfully: "There is an easy way for me to explain to you the state of a spirit that is outside of time. Take Ichigo, as an example. By transferring your powers to him, Kuchiki-_dono, _you essentially killed his human body, and yet, as a _shinigami, _he still lives. He is both living and dead. It's not so frightening a concept, is it?" She had frozen in the doorway, one hand on the bag-strap over her shoulder, her face bone-pale. Urahara shrugged: "Well, perhaps it is. You bestowed it on him freely. I assumed you were comfortable with the ramifications."

For a long time, she didn't move. Then, with a supreme effort of will, she fixed her eyes on Renji and spoke to him alone:

"I'll see you later." Her voice was soft.

"Yeah. Ah – Rukia?" But, by the time he said her name, she was already gone.


	18. These Words Before Dawn

CHAPTER 18: THESE WORDS BEFORE DAWN

Ichigo was not at school that afternoon.

Rukia sat through the lessons, watching the sun move across the sky, the shadows changing in the playground. Urahara's words had unsettled her. It wasn't that she had never thought about it before. She'd had long days and nights in prison to meditate on how she had twisted the human boy's fate.

She had altered the balance; she knew that. It was a crime. But, even so, she had assumed that he would live and die like an ordinary human. He would be reborn in Soul Society and allowed to continue as a part of the soul cycle, surely. Yet, if what Urahara had said was true, and he was already dead, or some part of him was already dead, then how could that be? It didn't trouble her that she didn't know; what troubled her was the possibility that Urahara knew and wasn't telling her.

Ichigo didn't come to dinner that evening either.

Since she was now an official house-guest, she was no longer reliant on him to bring her the leftovers from his meal-times. She sat and ate with his father and sisters and, after she eyed the plate with wide, hungry eyes for a little too long, they eventually gave her Ichigo's portion too. His father told her not to worry.

He did not come home at all that night.

Once both the girls were asleep, Rukia crept into his room. The window was slightly ajar. The curtains fluttered in an intermittent breeze and a shaft of moonlight fell across the bed and papers stacked on his desk. Closing the door behind her, she crossed to the centre of the room and closed her eyes:

"Where are you?"

All day she had had a sense of something missing and, a little after dinner, she'd realised that she wasn't instinctively tracking his spiritual pressure as she usually did. Now that she consciously reached for it, it wasn't there. One hand crept to her chest. She could feel her heartbeat quicken.

* * *

A short time later, Rukia was perched on the roof outside Ichigo's window. She was passing the hollow detector between her hands. She'd been trying to find his presence, through her spiritual senses, for several hours, but to no avail. She should contact Ukitake, she thought. Her commission came directly from her captain; he should be the first to know.

That she had failed. She had been asked to do one thing: keep watch over the human boy. And she had lost him.

Or maybe she could wait until morning. She could tell Renji. And Urahara. She didn't relish the thought, but who else could she turn to?

She glanced down at the detector and, before she could give it too much more thought, pressed the buttons that would allow it to function as a communication device. In many respects, it was similar to a human mobile telephone, except that, if the channels were clear tonight, it would not be connecting her to anyone in this world. Putting it to her ear, she heard a soft tone as the connection was made.

* * *

Byakuya took a seat at his desk and waited until the servants were gone before he allowed himself a long yawn against the back of his hand. He had initially thought that technology that allowed him to only hear rather than actually see his sister was somewhat primitive, but if she did insist on calling at such odd hours then perhaps it was for the best that she did not see him rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with the balls of his palms. He patched the call through and hastily scanned the coordinates that appeared on the screen before him: she was at the boy's house. There were still a few hours before dawn in Soul Society. He checked the readout: in her world too. For now, the two continuum were synchronised. He frowned.

"_Nii-sama?"_

She sounded nervous. If this was an emergency, he thought, she was wrong to have called him. She should have taken it immediately to her captain.

"What happened?"

She hesitated, then said:

"You asked that I report in to you."

"What?"

"You asked" – she said timidly – "That I report in to you."

There were a number of replies he was tempted to give; most of which revolved around the notion of his getting two more hours sleep. But his mind kept coming back to one thing: report in? Had he really used such terms? He'd wanted to know that she was alright, that she was going to come back. Unlike last time. He had told her to – well, perhaps those had been the words he'd chosen. It sounded so formal though. When she was quiet for a long time, he cleared his throat:

"I heard that you had been injured."

"Oh."

"Although Abarai-_fukutaichou _neglected to mention it in his own report."

"Ah, did he?"

"It may be that he thought he was protecting you" –

"Maybe."

"- Are you alright, Rukia?"

There was a long silence in which the line crackled and he thought he could hear her breathing softly, a world away. Then she answered:

"I can't sense Ichigo's _reiatsu _in the world of the living."

"I see." Come to think of it, he'd not been aware of Ichigo's less-than-subtle spiritual presence for some time, but, unless he was actively seeking it out, as he did now, then it simply whispered softly in the background, like the hundred thousand other spirits he sensed in any one moment. "He isn't dead," he said. Her slight intake of breath made him wonder if that was the one thing she had called him to hear: "Does Urahara know?"

"No. Ichigo was with me this morning, but he didn't go to school and he didn't come home. His father isn't worried. It's normal for human boys, but the loss of his spiritual pressure – that's unusual."

"What are you thinking?"

"Could he obscure it?"

If someone were to put odds on the person least likely to learn to obscure their spiritual pressure, Byakuya might have gambled his fortune on the Kurosaki boy, but, given the circumstances, he only said:

"If he took it upon himself to learn the technique. Else someone may have obscured it for him."

"Or it could be forceably obscured," she suggested.

"Hm." It was too early to think with the clarity he needed. Byakuya leant his chin on his hand. How good was her ability to sense _reiatsu _anyway? "I think you'd know; the same way you'd know if he died." Sometimes, you just knew.

"Why would he purposefully hide?"

"I can't answer that for you, Rukia."

She hesitated then asked:

"Will you tell Ukitake?"

It was true that she had been charged with keeping an eye on the boy. She had let him out of her sight and had lost him. It probably wouldn't look good, but he couldn't blame her for assuming that Kurosaki Ichigo might not disappear quite so easily. Soul Society had, after all, spent months trying to get rid of him, to no avail:

"Not unless you ask me to," he conceded: "I can see no disadvantage in spending one additional day trying to ascertain his location." She didn't answer and, in that silence, he did wish that he could see her face. "You should get some sleep," he said, his fingers hovering over the button that would end their conversation.

"Thank you, _Nii-sama."_

He pressed it and the sudden quiet was permeated only by the sound of his own breaths and the hollow ring of wood against wood as he pushed his chair back from the table and rose. He rubbed his hands over his face.

Those reports.

The _arrancar, _it seemed, had wanted the human boy. Rukia had been in the way. A single, clean strike to her belly had left a fatal wound. If not for the healer's abilities, she would have bled to death there, slowly, at the side of the road. All because the _arrancar _had more powerful and more interesting enemies to pursue.

The thought of it made his skin crawl. He had no way of protecting her. Not while she put herself in harm's way. And she had chosen this over everything he had tried to offer her.

Sometimes he thought it was just another way she found to torment him.

* * *

Rukia felt as if her heart was trying to beat out of her chest as she stood up, the hollow detector still clasped in one hand. Even after all these years, he made her nervous. Nothing had changed since they'd first met. She'd realised then that he was so far above her station, in status, in experience, in power and strength, that nothing she could do could ever live up to his expectations. With that in mind, she wondered, what had possessed her to contact him tonight? It hadn't solved anything. In fact, she felt quite shaken.

She went back into Ichigo's house. By the time she had padded over the bed and stepped down onto the floor though, she was feeling a little better. Ichigo was alive.

When she reached the landing over the stairs where the lights were on and family photographs adorned the walls, she felt a lot better. Byakuya wasn't going to tell Ukitake. That was something. That was….. good.

Soon it would be dawn. And today, she was going to find Ichigo.


	19. A Broken Promise

CHAPTER 19: A BROKEN PROMISE

_As Byakuya watched, the pale-haired boy cut through one shinigami after another, then plunged his sword deep into the rocky plateau to fight with bare hands. He believed he was invincible. He was a human. He was a human who dispatched officers of the Gotei as if they were cadets._

_He was a deviation and a disfigurement of the laws that governed both worlds._

_He whirled to follow Abarai Renji from the plateau. And Byakuya was there. He released his spiritual pressure and the strength of it struck Kurosaki like a gale. The human sprung backwards, putting ground between them. This was how he fought: keeping his distance until he knew his opponent's weakness. Well, Byakuya wouldn't give him a weakness to exploit._

_What he hadn't expected was the flash of hatred in the boy's eyes:_

"_You're her brother! Brothers are meant to protect their sisters! Kuchiki Byakuya, I will never let you hurt Rukia again!"_

_Byakuya wondered if he had successfully hidden is shock or whether any of it had been communicated to the boy. He had not come here to be judged. Had this Kurosaki set himself up as judiciary over all of Soul Society? Byakuya had left him to die in the gutter once and it had been more than he deserved. This time, Byakuya decided, he would suffer. There were reasons why humans could not wield shinigami powers, and why Rukia had been condemned for her crimes._

_He barely had to lift his sword to let Kurosaki understand the power he commanded. His reiatsu chased out across the field of battle, raising clouds of dust and sending small stones skittering towards the human._

_Of course, it was not just Kurosaki. Byakuya had always known the day would come when he fought Abarai Renji. It had just never occurred to him that it would be over his own sister._

_Ukitake too, and Kyoraku, had turned against him today. Yet it was Ukitake who disappointed him the most: his own mentor, a man who had taught him to live by the letter of the law, whom he had deeply respected. Why? Why, when he was willing to make the greater sacrifice in giving her up; why did they stand in his way? He could not remember this feeling. No-one had ever before cornered Kuchiki Byakuya and forced him to fight for what he believed in._

_He raised Senbonsakura. The boy brought up his own crude, heavy weapon before him and, despite himself, Byakuya was fascinated by the way the zanpakuto responded to the human's intentions: the bandage around its hilt uncurled and wound up Ichigo's arm. The child had talent. He fought alongside his zanpakuto, just like a shinigami._

"_Ban-kai!" roared Kurosaki and the air pressure on the plateau warped._

_Byakuya squinted at the figure, now partly obscured by rising dust. Was this a joke? It took hundreds of years to learn bankai and he could see no change in the human's physical form, although it now appeared that he wore a ragged black robe and the sword he held was thin; both the hilt and the blade were black._

"_That is your bankai?" Byakuya called across the distance between them. He wasn't given to mockery. He had never seen the need for humiliating his opponents, but, in the face of this boy's audacity, for once, his anger had the upper hand: "That sword is your bankai? You are a hundred years too early for bankai. I will show you." And now he raised Senbonsakura so that the tsuba was level with his chin and his release command was almost a whisper to the blade: "Chire, Senbonsakura."_

_Beginning at the tip, the sword's blade began to lose its integrity, peeling away into tiny pieces that danced away, each one like a pale pink petal caught in the wind. And, when the blade was gone, the blossoms gathered together in a cloud that streamed out across the plateau._

_Ichigo dodged it, and the cloud split, closing in on him from both sides. He sprung backwards and it divided again. Again. This pattern continued and he was fast, but, in the end, it converged on him from a hundred different directions. "I'll see you avoid that," sneered Byakuya._

_He didn't._

_But his sword arm moved so fast that Byakuya's eyes could not follow it. Within a heartbeat, he had parried the thousand petals. "Impossible." Kurosaki dropped into a crouch, panting, and, despite himself, Byakuya stepped closer, the wind bolstering his long cloak and the silk scarf at his neck: "So your bankai transforms your spiritual pressure into speed."_

_Senbonsakura reformed in his hands. A cold delight spread through his veins. For once, there would be no holding back: "You're lucky," he said: "You are only the second human being ever to have seen my bankai." And he spun the zanpakuto, then let it fall, blade downwards, into the ground. The plateau rippled like water, as it swallowed the blade and then the hilt. "Bankai. Senbonsakura kageyoshi," he intoned._

_The sky darkened. To either side of Byakuya an avenue of swords rose from the plateau, each as tall as a man and bearing the likeness of his relinquished zanpakuto. And, as Ichigo watched, each of these began to fracture and disintegrate as the first had done._

_Once more, the air was ablaze with cherry blossoms._

_Even more swords began to appear: hanging in the air, blade downwards. They formed a glowing circle around the two combatants, even as another ring of blades coaslesced above them, then another and another until neither the boy nor the shinigami could measure their height. They were enclosed completely by a glowing column of blades._

_Ichigo did not acknowledge the spectacle. He perhaps mistakenly thought his opponent was now unarmed because he flashstepped, closing the distance between them. Byakuya plucked one of the weapons from out of the air and they crossed blades._

"_Is this what you want?" Ichigo scowled. His face was suddenly inches from Byakuya's, but the shinigami didn't answer. For him, there was nothing left now but the battle. No further decisions needed to be made. He did not need to think. As Ichigo launched himself, once more, into flashstep, Byakuya followed. He matched his pace. Pushed him. In his moment's hesitation, Byakuya's blade swung down._

_Ichigo parried, but was forced to switch backwards as his flight brought him up against the wall of swords. He stepped into the air, finding purchase and thickening it with each step as if he had never been a human, confined to the auspices of gravity. But wherever he went, Byakuya marked him. It lasted longer than the shinigami had expected, but inevitably one of the petals at last sunk into the flesh of the boy's arm, forcing him out of shunpo. From a distance of a hundred paces, Byakuya hurled the sword he had been carrying towards the child._

_Ichigo was too slow to dodge, but too fast to let it hit its mark. The thrown blade struck his foot and passed through his ankle, bones and flesh together, and into the stone beneath, pinning him. His scream drowned out the static of their combined spiritual forces. Byakuya watched, fascinated. The boy clawed wildly at the blade and his ruined foot. Nothing, though, would release it. After a moment, he fell forward onto one knee and remained so, taking several sharp breaths to brace himself. Good. There was no pleasure to be had of defeating an opponent whose mind and will were already broken. When he raised his head, his eyes were full of pain, but full of hatred too, revealing a mind still capable of focussing. "I don't understand," he stammered, in obvious agony. Again, good. "You got faster."_

"_I did? No. I did not get faster. The truth is, it is you who slowed." Byakuya walked slowly back to him, the mist of the battle clearing from his mind. Give him time; time to understand. He wanted very much to see the child regret, to see the moment when he realised he had never had any power here, in this world._

_No, it was more than wanting. He needed it._

_If not, how would he meet the eyes of Hisana's smiling picture? He had to be right. Rukia had to be his sacrifice. Not this child's ornament. That was how this was going to play out. Her execution would end a dark chapter: his life drawn out between his promises to a dead woman and this living world in which one girl had brought dishonour to his name. Hisana had never demanded that he protect Rukia from herself. She was not his blood. She was not his responsibility. _

_She was a broken promise. That was all. "You had three days to learn bankai," he said, forcing himself back into the present: "To perfect it takes hundreds of years: time that you do not have. Did you really believe that you could defeat me?" As he approached, Ichigo straightened. He looked lost as Byakuya placed two fingers against his shoulder: "Hado no shi. Byakurai." _

_The kido coursed from Byakuya's hand into the child. A blast of white lightning exploded out of Ichigo's shoulder and passed across the circle. With another scream of agony, the boy collapsed. "It is you who slowed." _

_He lay there, moaning and panting, his body folded over and bowed to the ground. After a time though, he was quiet. Byakuya stepped closer. _

_He sensed it too late: the change in the child's spiritual pressure. From kneeling prone, he moved with such speed and force that the blade which had only moment's ago pinned him to the ground, skittered away forgotten. His thin, black sword rode upwards on a tide of reiatsu, slicing into Byakuya's chest and tearing upwards towards his throat. The shinigami blurred into shunpo, reappearing on the far side of the circle, his hand pressed to the jagged crimson line down his front. He threw a hate-filled glance at Ichigo, then looked down at his hand. It was stained the same crimson as his body. Centuries had passed since anyone had wounded him so grievously. Too long. The sensation felt keen and new. He steeled himself. If he could not suffer injury because he had forgotten what it felt like, then what good was he on the field of battle? Pushing it to the back of his mind, he grasped another of Senbonsakura's floating manifestations from the column of swords and turned towards his opponent as Ichigo howled in delight._

_But that was not Ichigo._

_Something with the human boy's form danced backwards across the plateau. It's face was a white mask, streaked with red, and it's eyes burned yellow. It moved in a fashion that was alien to a human, but perfectly suited to a hollow._

"_What are you?" Byakuya asked warily. He didn't need to raise his voice. He knew the thing would hear him. It was making a grand show of spinning Ichigo's bankai sword at the end of a chain attached to its hilt. Wailing like a banshee, but not from pain. It's ecstasy was as terrifying as it was unnatural, twisted onto the face of the human boy._

_With a blood-curdling shriek, it flash-stepped and, in the next instant, fell on him with a rain of blows. He began to fight in ernest. For the first time in living memory, he began to fight for his life. Between his parries, the creature's blade sunk into his arms, his chest, his side; sometimes shallow; sometimes deep. His mind, deep within the battle, was blind to the loss of strength his injuries should have incurred, but he was aware of a stinging pain. Its reiatsu, hollow reiatsu, in his wounds. What was this child?_

_He was giving ground. Even in bankai, he was being forced backwards._

_The shrieking had changed; it was clawing at the mask on its face, its expression having changed from one of ecstasy to sheer horror. He watched in confusion as it tore the mask away and broke it apart, then pitched forward, stymying its fall against the hilt if its sword. It was, Byakuya realised, human again. Panting. Doubled over. A child's face stained with sweat and blood._

_Byakuya swayed where he stood, his vision wavering dangerously. He had let it come to this. His hado could have inflicted a fatal wound, but he had wanted the boy to suffer. With his last breath, he had been meant to repent of his assault on Byakuya's world. Instead, that thing had taken over and now they were both at the very limits of their strength. Byakuya's own body was heavy. Several of his wounds should be fatal, but he had learnt long ago to channel his reiatsu into controlling the bleeding. He did so now, instinctively. It would buy him time, but the more it drained, the less effectively he could fight. And, despite all this, he found himself smiling inwardly. He was living; in these moments. An opponent worthy of him. A reason to kill. It had been such a long time since he'd experienced these things._

_The human was no better off than him. Now that the yellow light of a hollow had cleared from his eyes, Ichigo had barely moved from his prone position, hunched over his blade. There was blood on his lips._

_We're going to kill each other, Byakuya thought._

_Hisana would be so angry with me for this. Because the child will not repent. The child is going to die defending the life of her sister, and I will die unsaisfied because it was never his life that I desired. _

_He cleared his throat: "You do not have to explain yourself to me, Kurosaki Ichigo, but you understand, don't you, that you could have killed me if you had let that thing keep control." He wondered at his sudden him, the sky was lightening. The circling swords were fading out of existence. He stared, uncomprehending. His bankai was failing. Had it really come to this? As if in answer, the glowing sword in his hand grew dull and solid, taking on the unreleased form of his zanpakuto. He stared blankly at it. His thoughts were suddenly sluggish and detached. Yet, when he raised his eyes, he could see that Ichigo had straightened, a look of grim determination on his face:_

"_I want a fair fight. You are fighting me, Kuchiki Byakuya – not that thing. Now, let's finish this!"_

_Ichigo's eyes blazed blue with his Byakuya was not afraid of death. He was not afraid of pain._

_He was afraid now because he thought he might have betrayed her. All because he had wanted to prove to the boy that he was right._

_He channeled his remaining energy into the katana. All that he had, sparing not even that which he needed to stay the bleeding. In those last moments, all that kept him on his feet was the white energy in the blade, forming a halo above his head and two vast angelic wings at his back. Ichigo attacked._

_Byakuya released his blade and Senbonsakura screamed in agony as it was wrung dry. Their reiatsu collided, each tearing into the other with a force that cracked open the stone beneath them. Ichigo landed a blow against the shinigami. Byakuya parried with his blade and the suddenly-dull metal shattered. _

_A pain like nothing he had ever experienced. _

_He staggered forwards, past his opponent. The child had gone still behind him, and all Byakuya could hear now, through the rush of static, was the human's hoarse breathing, wet with blood. He had been so close. Another blow and Kurosaki would be dead. Please, he thought: just a little more time. I can finish it. But his eyes fell on the broken blade in his right hand and he felt an overwhelming despair._

_He leant heavily against a boulder flung loose by the clash of their spiritual energies. It felt warm to the touch. And, around him, the light of day, unclouded by their reiatsu felt suddenly too bright._

"_Kurosaki Ichigo," he managed: "You have defeated me." He heard the boy's shocked intake of breath behind him. And his last words were a whisper: "If you intend to save her, then go."_


	20. The Nature of Strength

CHAPTER 20: THE NATURE OF STRENGTH

Rukia had spent all day trailing through the streets of Karakura. Winter in this world was bright but cold. It was easy to keep her pace to a light job without breaking a sweat and she could cover more ground that way. She was searching, not with her eyes, but with all the rest of her senses, through the shining spirits of the human world. There was no trace of Ichigo's _reiatsu _anywhere and his family were starting to worry. To her, it seemed a cruel thing to leave them without a word of explanation. To leave her, without a word of explanation. True, she had done the same in April when she had vanished into the human world, but that was different, wasn't it?

Probably.

Come dusk, she was forced to admit defeat. She had failed in her mission. She would have to tell Ukitake and, for that, she felt she needed moral support, possibly in the form of her best friend, and, although she wasn't sure if Renji would offer sympathy or just another dressing down, she went to find him nonetheless.

_Urahara Shoten_was shut, but she walked up to the door and knocked hard. A light drizzle was soaking through her dress. She hadn't bothered masquerading in a coat and scarf tonight and had received some odd looks from passers by as it was the coldest night of the year so far, but it didn't matter. This wasn't a social call. Before she could knock again, though, the door slid aside with a sharp crack and there, in the low light, stood Orihime. Rukia stared at her. She stared back.

"Inoue, are you alright?"

The human girl burst into tears.

* * *

Rukia didn't know Orihime well. Not when it came down to it. She was bright, friendly, always excited about something or someone. Rukia liked her even if she didn't understand her. There was nothing not to like: no charade; no pretences. Whatever she meant, she said, and whatever she did was done with such burning integrity that it was impossible to find fault in it. Yet it seemed to Rukia that their lives had followed such different paths that, half the time, it felt as if they weren't even speaking the same language.

Rukia led her by the hand up a disused stairwell and out onto the roof of an abandoned building. Inoue's earlier tears were drying on her cheeks. The last few steps of the way, she'd started paying attention to where they were going. Now, she gasped as she stepped out onto the moonlit roof:

"What is this place?"

"It's just somewhere I come to think. Well, one of the places anyway." Rukia surveyed her domian, hands on hips, then turned back to the girl: "How are you feeling now?"

"I don't know what came over me! I'm so sorry!"

"It's not a problem."

"You're very kind, Kuchiki_-san." _She took a seat on the rooftop and, retrieving a tissue from her sleeve, dabbed at her eyes. Rukia came to sit beside her and leant back gazing at the sky.

That was another thing about Inoue: she didn't like silences. "I'm sorry to trouble you, Kuchiki-_san._"

"You're really not troubling me."

"You see, I received a message from Urahara asking that I meet him at the shop this afternoon and, when I got there, Chad and Renji were both training. I thought he might want me to train too, but instead – instead" – she started to sniffle again and Rukia glanced at her, somewhat at a loss as to what to do. When she could contain it no longer, Orihime's words merged into a series of loud sobs: "He said I couldn't fight! He said I wasn't strong enough, that I should be no part of this war because I would just be a burden on everybody!" Tissue forgotten, she started to wipe her face with both sleeves.

"What? Let me get this straight: Urahara doesn't want you to fight because he thinks your powers aren't strong?" Rukia wasn't helping. Although Orihime's sobs were under control, tears still streamed down her face. The _shinigami _knelt up: "Let me tell you something, Orihime. The people who are a burden on the battlefield aren't those who lack strength; only those who lack resolve. And you are resolved to fight, aren't you?"

Orihime bit her lower lip and nodded:

"But he said" –

"I don't care what he said! You've been with us every step of the way. You think no-one's ever told me I wasn't strong enough?" They had. They saw a diminutive woman and they believed that was the extent of her. But strength was not the reach of her sword or the force behind her strikes; it was the steel that ran through her. She could see nothing in Orihime to suggest she was not strong.

"But he's probably right," the human said cautiously, caught off-guard by Rukia's zeal.

"No, he's not!" She knelt again: "Listen, Inoue: you and I should go to Soul Society. We can train together. We can grow stronger together." Inoue's eyes were wide and a little frightened, but Rukia recognised a glimmer of hope and gratitude. The human reached forward and took both her hands in her own:

"Alright, Kuchiki-_san! _I would love to see your home!"

* * *

They had been on the rooftop for nearly an hour when a third girl dropped from the sky and kidnapped Orihime.

She was of a slight build, dressed in a red tracksuit, with blond hair pulled into bunches on either side of her head. She dropped out of the sky and into a crouch between Rukia and Orihime, then wrapped her arms around the human girl and sprung back into the air. "Orihime Inoue!" she cried: "Ichigo needs you!" And, just as Rukia was reaching for a sword that wasn't there, they were gone.

Inoue hadn't screamed.

That was he first thing Rukia thought. Suddenly alone and staring at the blank space where the human had been: she had obviously recognised her kidnapper. But that girl had not been human. For a start, humans couldn't fly. She'd had a stronger _reiatsu _than a human too. Not like a quincy's. Closer to a _shinigami's, _but she wasn't a _shinigami _either. And all of that was probably very important, but, for Rukia, it paled into insignificance in the light of one particular detail: Ichigo's _reiatsu _was all over that girl. She'd have known his energy anywhere; she just hadn't expected to find it there, on a stranger. Damn it. And, to top it all off, she suspected her own sudden anger had nothing to do with the rude interruption to her conversation with Inoue.

"You're all bastards," she murmured, standing up and moving to the edge of the rooftop. The lights of the city blinked up at her, unphased: "Quit hiding things from me." And, with that, she closed her eyes, found the fresh trail of _reiatsu _and started to follow it.

* * *

She had to wait until dawn for Inoue to emerge from the abandoned warehouse where the _reiatsu _trail had led her. Rukia had tried the door, just once and only to prove to herself that she wasn't being shut out by ordinary locks. As she had neared the threshold, every hair on her body had stood on end. There was _kido _here: a barrier thatshe had inadvertantly crossed. It was well-hidden though. She'd not felt it until she was through. And then she could feel his _reiatsu: _rich and strong and dark. It wasn't the energy of the boy who had fought his way into her world to save her life; this was Ichigo as he was now: haunted by his shadow, but growing more powerful with every passing day. He had chosen to face his demon, she realised. She wasn't imagining it: he felt more confident, more at ease with his new strength. Whatever he had come here for, whoever he had met: they were helping him.

Where she had been unable to do so.

All through the dark hours until the first light of day bleached the horizon, she stood with her cheek pressed up against the door, thinking. Shortly after dawn though, she sensed Inoue's _reiatsu _approaching and, wiping the tiredness from her eyes, stepped backwards, beyond the reach of the _kido _ward. At length, the girl emerged. She looked shocked and a little ashamed to see Rukia:

"Kuchiki_-san! _I didn't mean to leave you behind! Ichigo – that is – er – he" –

"It's alright," she said firmly: "Whatever he's doing in there, he chose not to tell me. That was his decision and I won't act against it." She held out her hand to Inoue: "Let's go." She wished that he had trusted her, but he hadn't, which meant he was probably doing something stupid. That would be nothing out of the ordinary then. But he had trusted Inoue.

And she could accept that. She really could. Because this was their world and, in the end, she'd had no right to be a part of it.


	21. An Ordinary Girl

CHAPTER 21: AN ORDINARY GIRL

Orihime slipped her hand into Rukia's and squeezed it as they crossed the lawn:

"I can't believe you live here!"

They'd spent the afternoon training in the grounds of the Thirteenth Division barracks and Rukia was more than happy with the girl's progress. She didn't understand the nature of her powers, but she was capable of a number of interesting techniques, including potent wards that shielded her against attack and the ability to reverse some of Rukia's spells: something she'd never encountered before. They'd agreed to both think hard on the best way to utilise her talents. She was not physically strong. Her attacks were unlikely to do much damage, but the reversal: now that, surely could be put to use against their enemies.

Byakuya had emerged from his quarters to greet the girl. Though Rukia had made no effort to tell him of her return to Soul Society, it came as no surprise to her that he already knew. Orihime let go of her hand and went on ahead, bowing from the waist as she reached him. Though clad in a pale blue kimono and _haori_, he nevertheless retained all the dignity and presence of a captain of the _Gotei_ Thirteen.

"_Nii-sama, _this is Orihime Inoue. Inoue, this is my brother, Kuchiki Byakuya-_taichou."_

Byakuya nodded. Then Orihime straightened and a strange thing happened: she looked straight at Byakuya and gave him the most open and honest smile Rukia had ever seen. It was like a ray of sunshine and she offered it to him as a gift, given freely. Byakuya's expression never changed, yet Rukia found herself wondering if there was an echo of uncertainty in those grey eyes.

"Your house is so beautiful." Orihime effused: "Would it be possible to take a look around the grounds?"

"Of course," he said; then, with barely a moment's hesitation he added: "I'll show you myself."

Rukia stared. Had she heard right? Yes. To her astonishment, it seemed that Orihime had just fallen into step with her brother and they were walking away from her across the lawn. She shook herself, wondering if she had been meant to join them.

"I'm going to get changed," she called before either could invite her, but they already seemed to be lost in conversation.

She had never brought a guest back to the house. Visits from members of her squad didn't count. In recent times, Renji had visited, but he was as much her brother's lieutenant as he was her friend. She had been nervous of bringing Orihime here. She had always felt anything but welcome in Byakuya's house and Orihime had seemed like the type who might just shrivel under his cold gaze if she weren't offered some kind of protection. Clearly though, that wasn't going to be necessary. From where she stood, she could see them at the far end of the garden. He was showing Orihime the flowers: the white buds that bloomed so late in the year that they were still fresh in winter, and the beds that would be full of colour in summer; the plum trees, which would flower earliest and mark the advent of spring. The girl was smiling and listening as he talked.

I should probably have shown an interest in flowers, Rukia thought. I don't really like flowers though.

The servants chose that moment to bring her tea. She drank it while writing up a very brief report of her time in the human world and, by the time she finished, Orihime had crept into her quarters, pulling the screen door shut behind her. Her face was flushed and radiant as as she glanced around:

"Oh, everything here is so old!" she said, then caught herself and her hand flashed to her mouth: "I don't mean that your house is old, Kuchiki-_san. _I mean it's like stepping back in time. Honestly, everything here is like it would have been a few hundred years ago at home. I don't know my history all the well, but" – Rukia pressed a cup of tea into her hands and she smiled – "Thank you!"

"How is my brother?"

"He seems very charming."

Rukia probably allowed a little too much incredulity to show through in her expression because Orihime hurried on: "I mean, polite. Like somebody in a storybook. A prince or something!" At that, Rukia chuckled and led the girl out onto the decking where she lowered her voice, as if afraid that Byakuya would hear: "I don't think there are people like that in my world anymore. Maybe there were, a long time ago, but not now. It's strange; Ichigo told me he was" – she caught herself – "Ah, that is, I don't think Ichigo likes your brother. I'm sorry." Rukia laughed softly:

"That's fine. Ichigo wasn't looking at flowers."

"I shouldn't have said that."

"You're not so far from the truth though. He can trace his family back to the Spirit King, so I supose it makes him royalty of a sort. There were once four noble households; now there are only two and Byakuya is the last of his line."

"What about you?" Her eyes widened and she gasped, spilling tea over the side of her cup: "Kuchiki-_san, _you're a princess!"

"Me? No. I was adopted into this family." Rukia started to tell her about Rukongai, the academy, her adoption into Byakuya's household, Hisana and the _Gotei. _She was easy to talk to, listening with empassioned interest to everything that Rukia described. As the sun set, the light changed to gold in the garden, picking out the delicate shadows of fallen leaves. Yet the day was perfectly still and it was not yet cool enough to force the two of them back inside. Inoue sat on the decking, her arms and legs threaded through the trellis, so that her feet hung a little above the lawn. Rukia knelt beside and a little behind her, speaking as she sipped tea. Periodically, the servants refilled the pot and the air was fill of the warm scent of stewing leaves. The shadows grew long and spindly and the grass was mottled by the dusk, and Rukia spoke of Kaien. It was easier now. Some things were clear in her head; others, she glossed over quickly. She heard the girl's reactions to the tale in the changes in her breathing. This was something Rukia had never told Ichigo. It was harder for her because Ichigo had an idea of what it felt like to kill. He would know that it stained you somehow, and she didn't want him to see her in that way. When she finished, the moon had just blanched the horizon and Inoue was quiet for a long time. Eventually, she said:

"Why don't you stop?"

"Hm?"

"After the war, when everything's peaceful again, you wouldn't have to keep on being a _shinigami. _I mean, surely you have everything you want here."

Rukia glanced around. The moonlit garden was very still. She supposed that, when it was laid bare like that, her life as a _shinigami _had not been the most successful one. Kaien's death was a shadow that stretched over everything; then there had been her disappearance in the human world. And, most recently, she'd been forced to acknowledge that Ichigo, despite everything they had been through together, did not need her now:

"Battles end, but not the war against hollow," she said at length: "There will always be people who need protecting and the balance between the worlds" –

"But Kuchiki-_san" – _the girl turned and grasped her hand with an expression of genuine distress – "I don't understand. We never really did get to know each other at school. If you'd told me all of this then, I'd have thought you were mad, but I can see it all now. You have a beautiful home, a family, money, beautiful clothes, all the food you could ever eat, and friends. You have us now too. We're friends. So, if being a _shinigami _doesn't make you happy, why don't you stop?"

Rukia took her hand back:

"Why would you think I'm not happy?"

"You look sad….. sometimes." Inoue searched her face, but it had closed on her like a book: "I know that you were happy with Ichigo" –

"Ichigo has nothing to do with this!" She pulled her knees up to her chest, but, as she moved, the sleeve of her kimono swept one of the tea cups over and she yelped as scalding liquid touched her hand. Fortunately, she then had every excuse to turn away from the girl and start clearing up the mess, swearing softly under her breath. Inoue could not see that her face had coloured. She was angry, but she didn't know why. And perhaps it wasn't anger at all. Something in Inoue's words had cut too close to the bone; something had hurt her and she didn't want to find out what it was. She straightened with the tea tray in her hands.

"You make Ichigo happy."

Rukia froze. Not even a breeze stirred the garden. She steeled her expression as she turned back to the human girl:

"My mission was to keep track of the substitute _shinigami _and prepare him for the upcoming war."

"Okay."

"I didn't need to….. make him happy."

Inoue climbed to her feet, her expression sad:

"But you did, and you do. He always seems lost when you're not there and – and you're the same, Kuchiki-_san! _I used to think I was imagining it, but when you're with him, it's like you both shine. I thought I would hate you, but I don't – I really don't!" She took a step towards Rukia and the _shinigami _knelt again to replace the tea tray, then straightened, her head down, her hair falling across her face. She was steadying her breathing and, when she looked up again, Inoue's face was frightened, as if she thought she had said too much.

Rukia's smile didn't quite touch her eyes:

"He's an idiot, isn't he?" she said: "Inoue, can you promise me something?" Inoue nodded. "I need you to look after him."

The human girl's eyes widened until they were round as dinner plates. Rukia nearly knelt again, to pick up the tray, but was stopped as the full force of Inoue's hug caught her off-guard. After a moment, the girl's body shivered. "Are you crying?" asked Rukia. She realised, too late, that the bluntness of the question sounded less than compassionate, and tried to amend it: "Why are you crying?"

"I don't know! Don't you ever cry and you don't know why?"

"No, I" – She hesitated, realising that no explanation was necessary. The girl's hair smelt of strawberries and human soap. For all her sweetness, she had a crushing embrace, which let up only when her weeping relented and she stepped back. Rukia stared at her.

"You must think me such a fool," Inoue cried: "But I really thought you'd be angry with me, Kuchiki-_san!"_

"Why?"

"For saying all that about Kurosaki-_kun _and for asking why it was you wanted to be a _shinigami."_

"No." Rukia held her hand out to the human girl: "If anything, I think things are a little more clear to me now."

"Oh, good," she said uncertainly, taking Rukia's hand and squeezing it. "Because, it always seemed to me, Kuchiki-_san, _that you were just an ordinary girl. And we'll be friends still, won't we? Like we were at school."

"Sure," she reassured her, but, in her heart, she thought: friends who are about to go to war; how can we be anything but extraordinary?

* * *

That night, she made a decision.

When she had first met Ichigo, he'd been completely reliant on her to learn what it was to be a _shinigami, _to learn how to fight, to understand the spirit world, follow spirit ribbons, trace _reiatsu, _sense hollow. She missed that. She'd become fond of him.

No, even she wasn't stupid enough to couch it those terms. She loved him. It wasn't fairytales or drama; it wasn't songs and parades. For her own part, it had turned out to be quite quiet and straightforward: nothing like the storybooks would suggest. But that didn't change the facts. She was sure of it because seeing him again had shaken her to the core. Her loss of focus; her shambolic performance against the _arrancar. _He split her straight down the middle. One moment, curled up on his sofa as he offered her coffee in the morning; the next, trying to fight alongside him as if it didn't matter to her if he lived or died, or if there were no more mornings when he offered her coffee.

She hated coffee.

And, because these things mattered, they got in the way. It was just that, up until today, she'd thought it was only her that was getting distracted.

_You make Ichigo happy._

But she didn't want to make him happy. She was meant to be making him stronger. She couldn't do that because, when she was with him, she cared about all the other stupid little things that ticked along in his life, like whether he finished his schoolwork and if his grades had dropped since they'd last met, and the new poster in his room, which she'd studied at length, but still didn't understand, though he said it was something to do with a band. A band of what, she had wondered. He was the same. She made him happy and that meant that he found it hard to fight alongside her. They weren't equals after all; she was by far the weaker party now. He was constantly afraid of taking his eyes off her. She saw it in the way he checked on her, in his fear when she'd insisted on confronting the _arrancar _alone. In his blind rage when she'd been injured. Because of her, he took risks. To protect her, he was willing to make sacrifices. For the first time, she realised, they were both afraid of dying. Not because death frightened them, but because it would mean one losing the other.

The first lesson she'd ever been taught at the _shino _was that you could not fight if you feared death.


	22. Sacrifice

CHAPTER 22: SACRIFICE

_Kuchiki Byakuya cradled the broken sword in his arms and closed his eyes. Each breath sent a wrenching pain down his left side. In his ignorance, he had believed that the one to defeat him, many centuries from now, would be Abarai Renji. It had been inevitable that Renji would turn against him. He'd sensed that on the first day they'd met. And yet, here he was, on his knees and struggling for each breath, not because of Renji, but because of an upstart human boy._

_He had managed to reach the copse of trees on the edge of the plateau before his injuries forced him to stop. He'd collapsed against the leafless trunk of a dead acacia, shutting his eyes to the brightness of the day; only opening them now and again to stare in disbelief at the broken zanpakuto. His familiar was gone and, without it, he felt lost. He had never been any greater than the sword in his hand. Save perhaps once._

_He had held her hand as she died. It was the first time he had been defeated by something stronger than himself and he had sworn that he would not lose again: no matter the cost to himself; no matter that he could no longer control the power within him. He would prove to her that he could fight for her, that he was strong enough even to hold back the encroachment of death. Except he wasn't. She wasn't here. Not at the end. He had not been able to save her and he had not been able to save himself either because his devotion to the broken weapon in his hands had burned away everything that she had loved._

_There was a commotion on the plateau behind him. Swords clashed. They roused him back to the edge of consciousness and he realised that his chin had fallen against his chest. The loss of concentration was dangerous. It meant he was no longer using what little reiatsu his body was generating to stem the stream of blood from the wound in his shoulder. It was pumping with each heartbeat. He had ascertained, shortly after the end of the battle, that it would be this wound that would kill him. Strong reiatsu crashed against his inner ear. He raised one hand to his temple as if to block it out. There was a crackling sound in the air and a voice:_

"_This is Vice-Captain Kotetsu of Fourth Division. This is an emergency transmission to all members of the Gotei Thirteen and to the ryoka. All of what I am about to tell you is true. The Central Forty-six are dead. I repeat: the Central Forty-six are dead. They were murdered before the crimes of Kuchiki Rukia were brought to trial and those orders are henceforth repealed. Sosuke Aizen, Kaname Tousen and Ichimaru Gin are now wanted for the murder of the governing council. They will be held to account for their actions."_

_Byakuya was conscious now, trying to take in what he had just heard. So this, all of this, was a charade: the crimes of the ryoka, the trial, the sentencing, the execution. Rukia was a pawn. He was a pawn. They had known! They had known what he would do: that he would go along with the execution because it was the law and the honourable choice. But it was worse than that: they'd seen through the façade of Rukia's adoption. They had known that the bonds between them were empty. They had known that he would not help her. He rose to his feet, coughing blood, and started towards the plateau. He left the hilt of the sword lying at the base of the acacia._

_There were three bodies on the plateau. One was the Kurosaki boy, another his own vice-captain, Abarai; a third was Komamura, one of his fellow captains. Ichimaru Gin and Kaname Tousen stood on the far side of the plateau where a bridge connected the execution grounds to the Shrine of Penitence and, in the midst of all this, Rukia stood at the centre of a circle of claw-like standing stones, still dressed for execution. Sosuke Aizen was holding her upright by the collar at her throat._

_I was fighting the wrong person, Byakuya thought: I was so preoccupied with proving that she was not worth saving that I failed to notice that I had played straight into their hands. All this time, the only thing they wanted was her. But why? Why did they want Rukia? _

_As he watched, Aizen plunged one hand into the girl's chest and held her aloft as her body folded up over his raised arm. She hung limp. With a small snarl of victory, Aizen shook her loose and, suddenly, she was all that Byakuya could see: an empty body falling; a hole gored straight through her chest. She struck the ground and lay unmoving at the feet of the captain, even as Aizen held out a glowing orb in his hand: something that had been inside her. Byakuya had assumed she was dead, that he had just witnessed her murder, but, of a sudden, she moved. She sat up and stared, in horror at the hole in her chest. Aizen gave Gin the order to kill her._

_All at once, Byakuya saw how this would play out. He would watch them kill her and no-one would blame him. Perhaps he would die up here; perhaps they would send healers for the others and they would find him; but, either way, he could not, in his condition, be expected to thwart their plans. So they would kill her and, if he lived, the other captains would be silent and solemn in his presence, and, in private, they would nod and say that it was unfortunate she had to die. Another from Captain Kuchiki's family, when he had already lost so much. But who could have prevented it? Not Renji. Not the human boy. Not a soul on that plateau._

_Her life, despite his involvement, had been an unremarkable one. She had not excelled. She had not loved or been loved and nor had she paid heed to the things he had offered her: rank, status, wealth. She had not gone out of her way to make herself known and those who cared for her did so with a breed of curiosity, as if they should keep her close only because they might find out more. It would seem that her destiny, then, was to die here: the lever these captains had used to break apart Soul Society. In that, there would be no blame._

"_I did what you asked, Hisana," he said aloud. He was feeling feverish and his words echoed back at him from the trees: "Do you understand? I have to let her die!" I have to let you die. Your hopes, your affections, your sister, your future. Not mine. For all that I am, I am not strong enough to go on living, seeing her every day._

_Because the girl on the plateau with the bright, frightened eyes that gazed up into the face of her executioner: she was Hisana's future. She was someone else's dream and one that should have died years ago with its dreamer. If she died now, the last tie would be cut with Hisana. There would be no ghosts. He would no longer reach across the bed to find her missing or search the garden on a spring day for a slight figure in a pastel-coloured dress._

_There was no other way, was there? Was there another way?_

"_I am not strong enough to go on living," he whispered. For the first time, he understood what he had to do._

* * *

"The _arrancar _have returned to the world of the living," Ukitake told Rukia who had pulled aside the screen door, bleary-eyed with the morning. Her expression had quickly changed to one of focussed concern. "Prepare yourself, Kuchiki."

"Yes, Sir." She bowed and returned inside to change into her uniform. Ukitake moved over to where Byakuya was standing:

"What of the human?"

"I can organise preparations at the _senkaimon," _said Byakuya: "You would not delay Rukia's departure unnecessarily, would you?"

"No, I want her beside Kurosaki."

Byakuya bit back an immediate response and spoke in level terms as he said:

"She is not strong enough to fight them."

"But Ichigo is. She reported that he is learning to control the hollow mask. The Old Man wants to see him use this new power."

"And what makes you think he will use it now?"

"We both know he has a tendency to overreach himself when she is there. He fights as if all of our fates depended on it."

"That is because he fights for her," said Byakuya coldly.

"Indeed."

"Your callousness is a constant revelation to me."

"Really?" Ukitake glanced towards him. Even now, his unlined face was soft: "I look at the big picture, Kuchiki-_sama. _As do you, else you would not be here. As do all men in our position."

"I have rarely cared for your big picture where it concerns my sister and my wife."

"And yet."

"And yet."

The screen door sid back again and Rukia emerged with the human girl trailing after her, still yawning. Rukia bowed to them both:

"We can leave immediately."

"You shall. The _arrancar _will bring Kurosaki out of hiding. You need to ensure this new power of his does not run out of control. I want a full report on his progress when this is over. All communication from the world of the living suggests that this is another small incursion. They are testing our strength." She nodded. At her side, Inoue looked frightened:

"Can I help?" she asked.

"Unfortunately, you have a physical body and, as such, it will take us a little more time to prepare the _senkaimon _for you."

Rukia frowned:

"But Inoue can't travel back through the _senkaimon _alone."

"She won't," said Byakuya: "I can spare an escort of my men. Preparations should be complete within two hours; three at the most."

"But you must return immediately," Ukitake told Rukia.

"But I wanted to help!" cried Inoue. She turned towards Rukia: "This is why we trained! I can't stay here while you fight!"

"You have no choice, but this is the beginning: just the beginning, Inoue," Rukia promised: "I'll see you on the other side and" – she grinned as she started to hurry away – "We'll show them what you can do!"

Byakuya watched as his sister jogged across the lawn towards the gates of the mansion with her captain at her side. He trusted Juushiro. He was an exemplary soldier who had taught Byakuya everything he knew of tactics, leadership and battle. Byakuya had entrusted him with his sister's training and, in turn, Juushiro had developed a fondness for Rukia. Yet sometimes it seemed to Byakuya that the Thirteenth Division captain had lived too long. Life, for him, had ceased to have value in and of itself. And that was why he would use her. He would let her die for the Kurosaki boy. Byakuya was certain of that. Juushiro would not do it through want of affection for her, but because he would respect her own wishes. He would respect them even if they were blind and selfish and misguided.

"She'll be alright," Inoue said suddenly: "Rukia's very strong you know." She was staring up at him, this human girl with the honest eyes and the open face.

"Prepare yourself," he said: "We are going to war."

* * *

_Why had Byakuya saved her? To have her sent out into another battle? To see her killed? Or, worse, to have her watch her friends die?_

"_Kill her, Gin."_

_Despite his injuries, Byakuya had stepped into shunpo and he reached the other side of the plateau in the time it took Ichimaru to call his sword release. Stepping in front of the blade, he had put his arms around the terrified girl, pulling her out of the way, even as the blade ran him through. Ichimaru's zanpakuto pierced his side beneath is left arm and emerged from his right, but it was its withdrawal that finished him. His body crumpled and Rukia caught him. She was surprisingly strong, but she couldn't stop his momentum from pulling them both to the ground._

_She was screaming. Nii-sama. He was choking, but still he could hear her screaming. _

_Nii-sama, she'd called him, on the very first day she'd come to his home and she had clung to the appellation ever since as if, by repetition, she could really make it so. But she had never been his sister. She was Hisana's secret. Her shame. By this, he would, at last, be free of that shame._

_When next he became aware of anything more than darkness and pain, it was the reiatsu of the Captain of Fourth Division, Unohana Retsu. She was kneeling over him. He realised, to his horror, that they were trying to bring him back from the edge of death. Didn't they understand? This was his choice. It might be blind; it might be selfish and misguided. Ukitake would, no doubt, have understood. Yet something teased at the edge of his consciousness even now; something important that he was going to have to do before he could be granted peace. _

_He needed to remove himself from this strange triangle. Let them haunt one another and cease to haunt him. He was going to tell Rukia about Hisana._

_Unohana brought his sister when he asked for her. The sun was setting and she took his hand; there was barely a scratch on her now and he thought it extraordinary that she was the one who was going to live. That was, no doubt, what Hisana would have wanted. So he told her. She held his hand and she forgave him._

_Once more though, his own power betrayed him. His body started to recover, even as he lay on the field of battle. Rukia forgave him this recovery too, though he never did tell her the truth: that they were not both supposed to go on living._

_So, why had he saved her? For her to go to war? For her to grow stronger and more courageous than Hisana ever had? No. The truth was, he had never intended to save her. Her life would vindicate an otherwise cowardly act. The ones who loved her, because they did and he understood that now, would remember him as the one who had tried to save her. It gave meaning to an otherwise meaningless death._

_Ukitake would, no doubt, have understood_.


	23. Side by Side for the Last Time

CHAPTER 23: SIDE BY SIDE FOR THE LAST TIME

Rukia dropped down from the _senkaimon _and hit the ground at a sprint. The city was ablaze with _reiatsu, _but she was searching for just one. It was strong and it was dark, but he was there and he was already fighting.

She could sense Hitsugaya and the others too, their limiters released. The clashing spiritual pressures were great enough to cause tremors through the earth. Tiles fell from nearby buildings. The humans had either disappeared into their homes or were sheltering in doorways. Her own spiritual pressure, fortunately, was too low to draw immediate attention from the enemy. Yet, as she ran, she concentrated on concealing it. She would need every advantage she could get.

Ichigo was crouching in the street. She couldn't see his opponent anywhere. Cars stood skewed across the road, abandoned by their occupants, and she sprung over these, her feet making no sound on the metal as she ran towards him. His face was contorted in pain. A black sword stood vertically in the ground him, but it was only as she got closer that she realised the blade had passed straight through his right hand, pinning him to the ground. And now she saw, several metres away, the blue-haired _arrancar _who had attacked her just days before. His arms were outstretched before him. The jaw-bone that hung across his face met his bared teeth in a repulsive sneer of joy as he gathered his energy into a _cero: _an orb of pure _reiatsu _that purged the air around it of spiritual pressure. Ichigo could do nothing but stare in gaunt horror as his opponent prepared to eviscerate him. Rukia bounded onto the roof of the nearest vehicle and released her sword:

"_Mai, Sode no Shirayuki! Tsugi no mai. Hakuren."_

The surge of energy swept through her. It was almost as powerful as the surge of relief she felt as she realised Shirayuki had answered her. She'd not been sure, since that evening on the rooftop, whether all was well with her soul-slayer, but time and circumstances had conspired against her and she'd had no opportunity to meditate on the dream she'd had then. Her sword had, however, responded instantaneously, sending out a wall of ice that engulfed the _arrancar _before the _cero _left his hands.

She sprung down from the car and jogged across the tarmac to where Ichigo crouched, dropped to her knees and wrapped her hands around the hilt of the black sword. He snarled through clenched teeth as she tugged at it. She had a strong stomach, but this wasn't her forte and the blade was stuck fast. Her endeavours were only hurting him. "I came as soon as I could," she said, as if she could shout over his pain: "I wish you'd told me where you were training or who you were with! If you'd just come back to the house even once. How am I meant to help you if I don't even know where you are?"

"Shut up, Rukia!"

She was so taken aback by his anger that her hands dropped away from the sword and she just stared at him. He had closed his eyes against the pain. As she watched though, he looked up; his eyes focussed on something behind her and his face blanched.

Then a hand touched her hair. Deceptively gentle, it cupped the side of her face and she heard the air beside her ear whine in the same instant as she felt the gathering and warping of spiritual pressures at her temple. Had she been in any doubt about what was happening, she need only look at Ichigo's face. The _arrancar _was gathering a _cero _in its palm. She could feel the heat of it on her cheek and its light crept into the corner of her left eye. The voice that spoke into her ear was a laconic drawl:

"Think you can escape at this range?"

At a distance of a hundred metres, a _cero _would kill her outright. The energy, once released, blazed outwards in forks of lightning and flame designed to rip a target apart. Her only consolation was that it would take her head first, but she couldn't take her eyes off Ichigo's face. There were innumerable ways in which she could have died, but this was not one she had ever wanted him to see.

A sword whistled through the air. There was a howl of pain just behind her head and, all at once, the pressure, the light and the heat were gone.

She didn't bother to turn round. It didn't matter who had saved her. She slumped forwards onto hands and knees.

"Rukia?"

Don't even look at him, she thought: don't even look to see if he knows how close that was.

"We have to get this out," she said, leaning forward and taking a firm grip of the sword again: firm enough that he needn't see her hands were trembling. Although he sucked in a breath, he was silent this time and she was too numb to pay much heed as to whether she hurt him. As soon as it was free, she threw the sword away and straightened.

The pressure of the _arrancar _was closing in on them again and she turned, ready to fight, only to see the blue-haired demon dive down to the pavement to retrieve his sword before springing back into the air. He was locked in battle with something that looked like a hollow, yet wasn't. That _reiatsu!_ It felt so much like Ichigo's: light and dark all at once; chaotic and controlled; a melange of opposites. And she would have stayed just to try and work out what it was had a heavy hand not landed suddenly on her shoulder. She turned. Ichigo had tried to stand, but, in the act, his face had drained of all colour. He coughed. A sudden flash of red on his lips and he folded forward, almost taking her down with him. She caught him. His head was heavy against her shoulder: "It's going to be alright," she said, even as her skin crawled at a change in his spiritual form. Beneath her fingers, the smooth material of the coat he wore in _bankai _began to transform back into the rough weave of a _shihakusho. _A red chain formed across his back ad, to his right, where it lay beside him, the narrow black sword he wielded in _bankai _shimmered, shivered and reformed itself into the heavy butcher's blade he usually carried.

"They're gone," said a light voice behind her. There was the sound of someone stepping down onto the tarmac and she turned to see the hollow that was not a hollow, save that now, its mask was gone and, to all intents and purposes, it appeared human. With straight blond hair to his shoulders and a grinning jester's face, he appeared to be only a little older than Ichigo. A flat-cap on his head sat at a jaunty angle. As she watched, he sheathed a sword in a make-shift sling on his hip, anachronistic against a pair of teenager's blue denim jeans: "I don't like to join the _shinigami _in their fights," he said: "But it looked like things were getting a little serious down here."

"Who are you?"

"Hirako Shinji." He offered her a hand, which she didn't take because both of hers were being used to hold Ichigo's prone body. The human boy was breathing, but his breaths were catching in his lungs, making him cough weakly. She could sense his _reiatsu _wavering. "I go to school with Ichigo," Shinji offered.

"I go to school with Ichigo and I've never seen you there."

"That's because, Kuchiki-_san, _I only went on days you didn't." He approached and crouched down, ungraciously clenching his fingers in Ichigo's hair to lift his head. The boy moaned. "That _arrancar _gave him one hell of a beating. I told him he shouldn't fight them. Not yet." He let Ichigo's head drop back onto Rukia's shoulder and rubbed his chin: "Come to think of it, I wonder why they bothered to come all this way only to leave."

"You didn't defeat it?"

"No. It left before I could. Not before it did enough damage though. Where's that friend of yours with the healing powers?"

"Inoue? She's in Soul Society. She won't be able to get here for several hours." Ichigo groaned again and, carefully, she lowered him to the ground, trying to assess the damage. His face was bruised, but there were no obvious wounds on his body. "Tell me what happened."

"That _arrancar _beat him hard enough to pulp every organ in his body is what happened."

"I can start to heal him, but I may need help."

"I am help!" He grinned: "But, if I'm not what you're looking for, then one of my colleagues is a master of _kido."_

"Then that should suffice."

"Are all the _shinigami _as friendly as you or do you hold it against me that I saved your life?"

She never got a chance to answer because, by the time she turned, he was already gone. Now, reaching across Ichigo's body, she began to thread her own _reiatsu _into his own, binding together wounds she couldn't see.

"Rukia – what was it?"

"_Arrancar," _she said. He was breathing tightly now, but no longer coughing. All around her, the humans were starting to emerge from the surrounding buildings to survey the damage. Nobody saw the black-clad boy and girl in the middle of the street.

"Where did you go?" he murmured.

"I went to Soul Society to train for a while. I came back as soon as I heard" -

"I felt you leave."

Her healing faltered a little. She glanced at his face, but, apart from the screwed-shut eyes and the clenched jaw, he was giving nothing away, so she scoffed a little and resumed:

"You must be really sick. You make it sound like you missed me."

"No," he whispered and, when she looked, he'd cracked open his eyes to hazel slits: "I was glad you were safe."

"Now you just sound like an idiot," she said. When she looked again, though, his eyes were shut. His breathing was regular at last. "Ichigo?"

It was probably better this way; the healing of major wounds was rarely pleasant for the one being healed.

By the time Hirako Shinji returned, Ichigo was out of danger, but Rukia was exhausted and was trembling from the exertion when Shinji laid one hand on her shoulder to stop her. The wounds had been prolific, spread throughout his body. An instinct that came naturally to some _shinigami _had saved his life: he had channelled his own _reiatsu _into halting the internal bleeding. He was so accomplished sometimes that she forgot he was not a _shinigami _with centuries of experience. Still, her healing work had demanded she transfer considerable amounts of her own _reiatsu _into his body. She swayed as she stood and, despite herself, let Shinji take her weight. He laughed as both his hands closed over her shoulders and she shivered:

"A job well done, Kuchiki-_san. _I think we can take it from here."

There were more of them; she could feel their _reiatsu: _strong and clear like the _shinigami, _but laced with a dark, poisonous edge. Like Ichigo's. She trusted Ichigo though.

"Who are you?" she asked, without turning round to face them.

"Pleased to meet you, Kuchiki-_san. _We are the Visoreds. Soul Society's Masked Army."

* * *

She needed to sleep. She had left Ichigo in the hands of the Visoreds, but they had returned him to her care before dusk, saying that they had done all they could. He was still unconscious, but his physical body was now decorated with an array of convincing-enough bandgaes and she had informed his family that he had been in an accident.

_You were safe._

She glanced over at him where he lay on the bed. She had squeezed herself in between his wardrobe and his desk and was thumbing through reports from Soul Society on the hollow detector, trying to pretend she'd not heard that. It wasn't as simple as Inoue thought. She didn't want to stop being a _shinigami. _She wanted to be a better _shinigami. _

If she was stronger, they might be equals again. He might fight beside her again. He might need her again in a way that she wanted to be needed.

Strong or weak, she had trained as a soldier; she had steeled herself for a fight. No matter if he wanted her to be safe; she would not stand back while others fought on her behalf. She would not go home and wait forlornly in the shade of a willow tree for the end of the war to come, which seemed to be what he would have liked:

"Damn you, Ichigo," she muttered.

"Cut the guy some slack."

She jumped out of her skin. Her _gigai's _skin, if that were possible. Renji was leaning in through the open window, only the dark spikes of his hair clearly visible against the night sky.

"Are you spying on me?"

"I came to fetch you. You're wanted."

"Hitsugaya-_taichou?"_

"Yeah. We all are. You ready?"

"Hm." She reached into her pocket and took out some soul candy, then, swallowing a piece, stepped forward, out of the _gigai. _It looked up at her, then glanced around the room and grinned. "Just sleep for now, Chappi," she told it, and it nodded enthusiastically, as it would have done to anything she'd told it.

She stepped up onto the bed, her feet leaving no impression on the sheets, and climbed out of the window into the night.


	24. Return and Regroup

CHAPTER 24: RETURN AND REGROUP

Rukia sat, curled into herself, her head resting on her knees in the centre of a large sofa. She had never been to Inoue's house before. It was spacious, decorated with an eclectic mix of furniture and nicknacks acquired over the years. The _shinigami _ranged around the room looked utterly out of place in the midst of all this domesticity. However, the house and all its contents held very little reality for her now: the bright lights, the sofa and the cushions, the tap that constantly dripped on the periphery of her hearing; they had all faded into the background as her mind tried to mull over a thousand and one different possible scenarios for what had just happened.

Renji slumped on the sofa beside her, making her start. Like a lounging tiger, he seemed relaxed at first glance, but his eyes were sharp and clear and full of worry:

"I know you think it's your fault," he said.

"I shouldn't have taken her with me. I definitely shouldn't have left her behind."

"You left her with Kuchiki-_taichou. _She couldn't have been in safer hands!" She glanced at him for that and he gave a half-smile: "Well, you know what I mean."

"I wasn't thinking straight. You warned me about that and I didn't listen."

"Did I say that? You shouldn't listen to me. I spout a lot of crap." He scratched his cheek and, without any fuss, let his arm fall so that it lay across her shoulders. She didn't move away, so, after a moment, he pulled her up against his chest, where she lay, still and quiet, listening to his breathing.

The screen on the wall behind them flickered and buzzed. It was another piece of equipment from Soul Society. Hell butterflies were the most reliable means of communication, but they were also the slowest. The rest of their technology relied on the channels between worlds remaining clear. They had been here for three hours now and a storm of electrical interference had prevented them from sending or receiving any messages. As soon as the screen flickered, everyone in the room stiffened and turned towards it. The doorbell sounded. Renji stood up from Rukia's side and, with a quiet curse, went to answer it, just as Ukitake Juushiro appeared on the screen.

"Ichigo's here," Rukia said to no-one in particular, since all present should have been able to sense him. A moment later, he and Renji stepped into the room and Juushiro acknowledged them both with a nod. Ichigo glanced around the room, somewhat wide-eyed at its transformation into a base for the war effort, and he asked the one question that was on everybody's mind:

"Where's Inoue?"

Ukitake cleared his throat:

"I'm glad that you were able to come, Kurosaki-_kun. _It's important, I think, that you hear what I have to say."

"Rukia?" Ichigo asked softly. She had risen as they'd come into the room, but kept her eyes downcast as he approached. Beside her, Toshiro, addressed Ukitake:

"Why are you here, Ukitake-_taichou? _We were expecting a communication from Captain Commander Yamamoto."

"I'm here because I was the last one to see her alive," he said and Ichigo stopped in his tracks a short distance behind Rukia. She had not looked up. "Orihime Inoue left via the _senkaimon _yesterday afternoon, but our reports suggest that she never arrived in the world of the living."

"What does that mean?" demanded Ichigo.

"Kuchiki-_taichou _had her accompanied by four men from his division. Two were found dead; the other two awoke in the _dangai _and returned to Soul Society where they reported that they had been attacked by _arrancar." _He took a deep breath: "And that means that either she is dead or they have taken her."

"No!" Ichigo barked suddenly at the screen and Rukia flinched: "No!" He snatched the bandage off of his right hand and held it up towards the screen: "Do you see this? It's healed – completely healed up overnight. The only person who can do that is Inoue and there's traces of her _reiatsu _all over my room!" Now Rukia did look up, her heart starting to beat faster. She hardly dared to hope, but Ichigo would know Orihime's _reiatsu. _She was probably one of the few people he would recognise.

Ukitake glanced off-screen to his right, then stepped aside, disappearing out of the picture and the imposing figure of the Captain Commander filled the screen. He frowned deeply:

"In many ways, that is a far more disturbing development, Kurosaki-_kun."_

"What?"

"If you are right and Orihime Inoue really did visit your house last night then that information would suggest that she was not captured by the _arrancar. _However, she is not in Soul Society and she is not in the world of the living. If she has gone to Hueco Mundo, then your observations would suggest she accompanied the _arrancar _of her own free will."

"Inoue would never do that!"

"At the very least, it would suggest that she is a traitor to Soul Society."

"That's a lie!" Renji put a restraining hand on the human boy's arm as Yamamoto continued:

"I can no longer afford to have my forces split. We think we have some idea of Aizen's intentions now and, since we are on the brink of war, I require all thirteen of the divisions to regroup here in Soul Society. You will report to your captains."

Rukia took a deep breath:

"Requesting permission to go after the human girl, Sir."

"I forbid it!"

Her eyes flashed up:

"She's helped us from the start! We can't abandon her in their" – Renji's hand landed on her shoulder, hard enough to be a warning. She clamped her mouth shut.

"Captain Commander Sir," he said: "Let us go after the traitor and arrest her."

"No, Abarai-_fukutaichou. _The strength of the _Goteijusantai _will not be split between worlds."

"Then Sir," said Rukia, surprising herself: "I cannot follow your order." A hush fell over all the others and she felt every pair of eyes in the room turn towards her. She wasn't even an officer. She would be held to account for insubordination at the very least, but, right now, she didn't care. Renji's fingers tightened on her shoulder, his grip grinding her bones. Then he spoke suddenly:

"I have to second that, Sir."

"Hm." Yamamoto snorted through his moustaches, his tone suggesting that he had just become aware of a minor inconvenience: "I had foreseen that this might be the case and that is why I have already made provisions to ensure that you return to Soul Society."

A sudden storm of spiritual pressure from the back of the room forced all of those present to steady themselves as picture-frames and ornaments skittered across the shelves. Their robes billowed around them like black wings. Rukia didn't need to turn to know that a _senkaimon _had opened behind her or to identify who it was who had stepped through. Her gaze dropped to the threadbare carpet and her hands tightened into fists at her sides. Renji turned to face the newcomers:

"Kuchiki-_taichou. _Zaraki-_taichou."_

"We have orders to return you to Soul Society," said Byakuya. Rukia hadn't moved, but Ichigo now strode past her, his expression defiant as he met the Captain Commander's cold gaze:

"At very least, tell me how I can get to Hueco Mundo. I'll go and find her myself!"

"No, you are a substitute _shinigami _and, as such, your duty is here in Karakura Town," Yamamoto answered.

"Ichigo," said Rukia, but everything in his stance and the set of his jaw suggested that he had forgotten about her existence. "Ichigo." He ignored her and, in the brilliant, pale light of the _senkaimon, _her brother's silhouette waited, ebbing and flowing with the spiritual pressures of the others. She realised suddenly that she and the human boy were now alone. Everyone else had stepped into the gate. A hell butterfly switched past her cheek. "Ichigo." But only Byakuya answered:

"You must come now, Rukia."

She stepped back from the screen and from the familiar presence of the boy, turned, and followed her brother into the light.


End file.
